Why then are we angry? Because we admire the material things of which they rob us. For only cease to admire your clothes, and you are not angry with him who steals them; cease to admire your wife's beauty, and you cease to be angry with the adulterer.
Know that the thief and adulterer have no place among things that are your own, but only among things that are another's and beyond your power. If you let them alone and count them as nothing you have no one to be angry with anymore. But as long as you admire these things you must be angry with yourself rather than with them.
For, look you, you have fine clothes, your neighbor has none: you have a window, you wish to air them. He does not know what is the true good of man, but fancies, as you do too, that it is to have fine clothes. Is he not to come then and carry them off?
Feelings of anger and hatred may at first appear to be far beyond our control, yet the Stoic comes to learn how deeply the patterns of our thoughts shape the patterns of our emotions. When I am suddenly overcome by a wave of resentment, the key to resolution is in examining my appraisal of meaning and value. I will find that the mindset governs the moods.
I will only be frustrated by the loss of the things I hold dear, and where I consciously choose to no longer attach such great importance to these conditions, their presence or absence will gradually cease to rule over my passions. My foul temper, and all the lashing out that goes along with it, is not the fault of the world, but a disorder of my judgments.
In line with a central theme of the Discourses, I make myself miserable by worrying about the things that were never mine to begin with, and I find contentment by looking after my own nature.
Do I, for example, define myself by how I look, or by a sense of sexual pride? Then it should come as no surprise that the man who steals my wardrobe or runs off with my wife will drive me into a rage. The scoundrel has no doubt done wrong, though there is no cause for me to therefore destroy my own peace of mind in the process. I am not what I wear. A woman is not somehow my property. Correction and forgiveness become achievable when possessiveness is tamed.
If I have spent so much of my time and effort on buying trinkets and winning bragging rights, can I blame the criminal for wanting them just as much? We are then the same in our lusts, and we differ only in our methods of acquisition.
Tending first to my character, and deciding upon an indifference to circumstances, there is no need to show them off, and no great hardship in their transience.
I think of that classic cartoon trope, where the character is enticed by the smell of a pie cooling on the windowsill. If he is hungry, or even if he just has a sweet tooth, he will be tempted to run away with it. When watching such cartoons as a child, I wondered why anyone would be at all surprised to lose the pie once it had been left unattended.
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