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I have begun to be a friend to myself. Musonius eventually returned to Rome under Galba in 68 but only to be exiled again, this time by Vespasian. While Vespasian initially banished all philosophers in 71, Musonius himself was exiled in 75, which speaks to how highly esteemed his reputation was in Rome at the time. It was about virtue and goodness—nothing else mattered. We can rise above pain and pleasure, death and evil.

Without a doubt, Musonius was one of the most practical philosophers. As professor William O. Rather, Musonius insists that practice is more important than theory, as practice more effectively leads us to action than theory. He held that though everyone is naturally disposed to live without error and has the capacity to be virtuous, someone who has not actually learned the skill of virtuous living cannot be expected to live without error any more than someone who is not a trained doctor, musician, scholar, helmsman, or athlete could be expected to practice those skills without error.

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Obituary Ann died at AM, May, 11, In the greatest of ironies, Ann's ovarian cancer was in almost full remission. Sadly, a very different beast settled on her lower spine. It mutated during radiotherapy for the ovarian tumour. It survived subsequent chemotherapy and continued to thrive. We knew that surgery was impossible - were Ann to survive it she would most likely be paralysed.

Our choice was to live as well as we could until Ann died. And we did. I had the downstairs of our house renovated so that Ann could be downstairs, enjoying the front porches with their outdoor flowers and birds, not to mention visits with friends who could, in spite of COVID, visit on the other side of the windows.

Altogether, it gave Ann such incredible joy, a joy that brought her to her death. Last night after dinner I settled in the chair I usually use in the morning.

It's on the front porch and has a very long look into the west, towards the lake. Of course, while sitting there I reminisced about Ann. I was looking out over the gardens she'd created, at the tree canopy we'd developed together, seeing the faded flowers from Laura ever so long ago to the faded blooms of the pink magnolia. It was wonderful to travel back and forth between ideas, thoughts, experiences, seeing the entire front yard in a new light.

While looking this way, it seemed to me that Ann had joined the 'conversation' and the entire maple tree vista before me erupted into a two-hour light show, as the sun shone through the leaves of the trees.

It was entirely magical, ending with a perfectly ordinary exceptional sunset of the sort Inverhuron gets. This is some of what we saw the cinematographer and I and I hope you can see Ann's joy as simply as I do.

These people knew the system, knew how the markets were supposed to work, and had managed billions, if not trillions, of dollars. And yet, almost to a person, they were wrong—and wrong to the tune of global market havoc. Greed was what led people to create complex markets that no one understood in the hope of making a quick buck.

Greed caused other people to make trades on strange pools of debt. Greed prevented anyone from calling out this situation for what it was—a house of cards just waiting for the slightest breeze to knock it all down. What lapses in judgment might your vices be causing you?

And how can your rational mind step in and regulate them? Show us these things so we can see that you truly have learned from the philosophers. But, as he recounts in his biography of Demosthenes, he was surprised at how quickly it all came to him.

Study, yes, but go live your life as well. All of that is philosophy. All of it is experience that brings meaning to the words. Which is easier right here and right now? The same goes for freedom. If you chafe and fight and struggle for more, you will never be free.

If you could find and focus on the pockets of freedom you already have? For in that is the key to everything. Whatever else remains, be it in the power of your choice or not, is but a corpse and smoke. Who watches the watchmen? In a way, this is what Marcus is asking himself—and what you might ask yourself throughout the day. What influences the ruling reason that guides your life?

This means an exploration of subjects like evolutionary biology, psychology, neurology, and even the subconscious. Because these deeper forces shape even the most disciplined, rational minds. You can be the most patient person in the world, but if science shows we make poor decisions on an empty stomach —what good is all that patience?

Understand not only your ruling reason—the watchmen—but whoever and whatever rules that too. Remember that next time you hear someone ramble on about how the market decides what things are worth. The market might be rational. Diogenes, who founded the Cynic school, emphasized the true worth axia of things, a theme that persisted in Stoicism and was strongly reflected in both Epictetus and Marcus.

The good things in life cost what they cost. The unnecessary things are not worth it at any price. The key is being aware of the difference. As soon as one is in place, principles become necessary.

This will happen in all our affairs unless we remove the faults that seize and detain our spirits, preventing them from pushing forward and making an all-out effort. You walk into a business meeting, are caught off guard, and the whole thing goes poorly.

A delicate conversation escalates into a shouting match. You switched majors halfway through college and had to start your coursework over and graduate late. Sound familiar? Not because plans are perfect, but because people without plans—like a line of infantrymen without a strong leader—are much more likely to get overwhelmed and fall apart.

The Super Bowl—winning coach Bill Walsh used to avoid this risk by scripting the beginning of his games. You can walk into the stadium and you can start the game without that stress factor. Have a plan. Be content, then, to be a philosopher in all that you do, and if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself first that you are and you will succeed.

If we did these things because we liked it, that would be one thing. The irony, as Marcus Aurelius points out repeatedly, is that the people whose opinion we covet are not all that great.

Unthinking habit? But the base person is unable to do anything else. A child who is never given any boundaries will become spoiled. So you must be aware of that. You must put in place training and habits now to replace ignorance and ill discipline.

Only then will you begin to behave and act differently. Only then will you stop seeking the impossible, the shortsighted, and the unnecessary.

A doctor can tell from a radiograph or an autopsy whether someone sat at a desk for a living. If you shove your feet into tiny, narrow dress shoes each day, your feet begin to take on that form as well. The same is true for our mind. If you hold a perpetually negative outlook, soon enough everything you encounter will seem negative. Color it with the wrong thoughts and your life will be dyed the same. How much harder is it to be positive and empathetic inside the negativity bubble of television chatter?

But when we are, there is nothing that says we have to allow those influences to penetrate our minds. We have the ability to put our guard up and decide what we actually allow in. We embrace evil before good.

We desire the opposite of what we once desired. Our prayers are at war with our prayers, our plans with our plans.

All of these people, just as is often true for us too, are deceived and divided. One hand is working against the other. As Martin Luther King Jr. The Stoics say that that war is usually a result of our conflicting desires, our screwed-up judgments or biased thoughts. What am I actually after here? It can happen to you, so keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, and strong for your proper work.

Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you. Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good. It was simply thrust upon him. Nevertheless, he was suddenly the richest man in the world, head of the most powerful army on earth, ruling over the largest empire in history, considered a god among men. Without them, he might have lost his sense of what was important—falling prey to the lies from all the people who needed things from him.

And here we are, whatever we happen to be doing, at risk of spinning off ourselves. Reason must lead the way no matter what good fortune comes along. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Blink, we are constantly making split-second decisions based on years of experience and knowledge as well as using the same skill to confirm prejudices, stereotypes, and assumptions. Clearly, the former thinking is a source of strength, whereas the latter is a great weakness.

We lose very little by taking a beat to consider our own thoughts. Is this really so bad? What do I really know about this person? Why do I have such strong feelings here? Is anxiety really adding much to the situation? Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me. For we are made for cooperation. The question is: Are you going to be ready for it?

Might it not be better to understand up front—right when you wake up—that other people often behave in selfish or ignorant ways the toad than it is to nibble it throughout the day? Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.

How often do we meet people and think we know exactly who and what they are? And how often are these assumptions proved to be completely and utterly wrong? This is why we must fight our biases and preconceptions: because they are a liability.

Why is this thing the way it is? Am I part of the problem here or the solution? Could I be wrong here? Be doubly careful to honor what you do not know, and then set that against the knowledge you actually have. If we ever do want to become wise, it comes from the questioning and from humility—not, as many would like to think, from certainty, mistrust, and arrogance.

But when it comes to our own ruling principle, we yawn and doze off, accepting any appearance that flashes by without counting the cost. Merchants were often skilled enough that they could test coinage by throwing it against a hard surface and listen to the note it rang. All this for an imaginary currency, an invention of society.

The point of this metaphor is to highlight how much effort we put into making sure money is real, whereas we accept potentially life-changing thoughts or assumptions without so much as a question. One ironic assumption along these lines: that having a lot of money makes you wealthy.

Or that because a lot of people believe something, it must be true. Really, we should be testing these notions as vigilantly as a money changer. Our senses are wrong all the time! Part of Stoicism is cultivating the awareness that allows you to step back and analyze your own senses, question their accuracy, and proceed only with the positive and constructive ones.

Hold your senses suspect. Again, trust, but always verify. The perceiving eye sees what things supposedly mean.

Which one do you think causes us the most anguish? An event is inanimate. It simply is what it is. This will ruin me. How could this have happened? Bringing disturbance with it and then blaming it on the event.

He had a school. He hosted classes. In fact, his wisdom is passed down to us through a student who took really good lecture notes. One of the things that frustrated Epictetus about philosophy students—and has frustrated all college professors since time began—is how students claim to want to be taught but really secretly believe they already know everything.

As smart or successful as we may be, there is always someone who is smarter, more successful, and wiser than us. Thyestes: Anyone who has experienced how easily they flow back. Even two thousand years later it remains a classic of the revenge genre. Without spoiling it, the quote above comes from the scene in which Atreus is attempting to lure his hated brother Thyestes into a cruel trap by offering him tempting and generous gifts. At first, Thyestes declines, to the complete bafflement of his enemy.

We are typically surprised when someone turns down an expensive gift or a position of honor or success. General William T.

Not every opportunity is fraught with danger, but the play was intended to remind us that our attraction toward what is new and shiny can lead us into serious trouble. Be cheerful, not wanting outside help or the relief others might bring. A person needs to stand on their own, not be propped up. For instance, the writers we admire tend to be masters of economy and brevity. What they leave out is just as important—sometimes more important—than what they leave in.

Get to the point! Yet our own lives, habits, and tendencies might be a mystery to us. But then his position was revoked for political purposes. Who really cares, Seneca was saying, now you can focus that energy on your inner life. Which will help your children more—your insight into happiness and meaning, or that you followed breaking political news every day for thirty years?

I will pay my taxes gladly. Now, all the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life— things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape. Forty percent of everything I make goes to these people? And for what?! First off, taxes go to a lot of programs and services you almost certainly take for granted.

Get over it. Third, this is a good problem to have. Far better than, say, making so little there is nothing left to pay the government or living in an anarchy and having to pay for every basic service in a struggle against nature.

But more important, income taxes are not the only taxes you pay in life. They are just the financial form. Everything we do has a toll attached to it. Waiting around is a tax on traveling. Rumors and gossip are the taxes that come from acquiring a public persona. Disagreements and occasional frustration are taxes placed on even the happiest of relationships.

Theft is a tax on abundance and having things that other people want. Stress and problems are tariffs that come attached to success. And on and on and on. There are many forms of taxes in life.

You can argue with them, you can go to great—but ultimately futile—lengths to evade them, or you can simply pay them and enjoy the fruits of what you get to keep. As a form of a therapy, CBT helps patients identify destructive patterns in their thoughts and behavior so they can, over time, direct and influence them in a more positive direction.

Where do they come from? What biases do they contain? Are they constructive or destructive? Do they cause you to make mistakes or engage in behavior you later regret? Look for patterns; find where cause meets effect. Only when this is done can negative behavior patterns be broken; only then can real life improvements be made. Do away with being harmed, and harm disappears. One usage can be harsh and another might be completely innocent. The same word can mean a cruel slur or a pile of sticks.

In the same way, something said sarcastically differs drastically from something that was pointed and mean. The interpretation of a remark or a word has an immense amount of power. The difference between a fight breaking out and two people connecting. This is why it is so important to control the biases and lenses we bring to our interactions. When you hear or see something, which interpretation do you jump to? What are conflict, dispute, blame, accusation, irreverence, and frivolity?

They are all opinions, and more than that, they are opinions that lie outside of our own reasoned choice, presented as if they were good or evil. Let a person shift their opinions only to what belongs in the field of their own choice, and I guarantee that person will have peace of mind, whatever is happening around them.

And our opinion is often shaped by dogma religious or cultural , entitlements, expectations, and in some cases, ignorance. No wonder we feel upset and angry so often! But what if we let these opinions go? Not good or bad, not colored with opinion or judgment. Just are. That wisdom was ultimately about surrender and serving the common good—about the limits of our power and the importance of checking our impulses—something every person in authority needs to hear. Power and powerlessness seem so rarely to enter the same orbit—but when they do it can change the world.

Think about President Abraham Lincoln meeting with, corresponding with, and learning from Frederick Douglass, another former slave of considerable wisdom and insight. And, above all, be willing to learn from anyone and everyone, regardless of their station in life. Or to question whether wealth and fame are all they are cracked up to be? How great the fears high fortune stirs up within them. Why else would they have worked so hard for it? The same is true of so many things we covet without really thinking.

Is it possible to be free from error? Not by any means, but it is possible to be a person always stretching to avoid error. For we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide.

Attention matters—and in an era in which our attention is being fought for by every new app, website, article, book, tweet, and post, its value has only gone up. Part of what Epictetus is saying here is that attention is a habit, and that letting your attention slip and wander builds bad habits and enables mistakes. Your attention is one of your most critical resources. It reaps its own harvest.

It succeeds in its own purpose. Next, we must examine ourselves critically. Finally, we must make our own decisions—uninhibited by biases or popular notions. Of these, the first two are yours insofar as they are only in your care. The third alone is truly yours. It can be imprisoned or subjected to torture.

The breath can suddenly cease because our time has come, or because someone has taken it from us. Breathing can grow labored because of exertion or illness as well. But up until the very end, our mind is ours. Our mind is ours—free and clear. Stoics use an almost cynical language as a way to dismantle some of the fanciest or most coveted parts of life. Well, if you take a second to consider sex in such an absurd light, you may be less likely to do something shameful or embarrassing in the pursuit of it.

We can apply this same way of thinking to a lot of things that people prize. Consider that envy- inducing photo you see on social media—imagine the person painstakingly staging it. What about that job promotion that means so much?

Look at the lives of other so-called successful people. Still think it holds magical power? Money, which we want more of and are reluctant to part with—consider how covered in bacteria and filth it is. There must be something wrong with them. But it will provide some much-needed objectivity.

The one who is harmed is the one who abides in deceit and ignorance. This person claimed Cicero was saying one thing now but had believed something different in the past. If something strikes me as probable, I say it; and that is how, unlike everyone else, I remain a free agent. Accept it! And yet you keep an eye on him, not as an enemy or with suspicion, but with a healthy avoidance.

You should act this way with all things in life. We should give a pass to many things with our fellow trainees. The way you interpret your own mistakes and the mistakes of others is suddenly a lot more generous. My sparring partner is learning too. How short-lived the praiser and praised, the one who remembers and the remembered.

Remembered in some corner of these parts, and even there not in the same way by all, or even by one. And the whole earth is but a mere speck. In potentially negative situations, the objective, even superficial gaze might actually be superior. That view might let us see things clearly without diving too much into what they might represent or what might have caused them. In other situations, particularly those that involve something impressive or praiseworthy, another approach, like that of contemptuous expressions, is helpful.

By examining situations from the inside out, we can be less daunted by them, less likely to be swayed by them. Dig into your fear of death or obscurity, and what will you find?

We put up with our controlling boss, though we could probably get a different job if we wanted. We change how we dress or refrain from saying what we actually think? Because we want to fit in with some cool group. We put up with cruel critics or customers?

Because we want their approval. In these cases, their power exists because of our wants. The late fashion photographer Bill Cunningham occasionally declined to invoice magazines for his work. Indifference to it, as Seneca put it, turns the highest power into no power, at least as far as your life is concerned. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life. As cosmologist Neil deGrasse Tyson has explained, the cosmos fills us with complicated emotions.

On the one hand, we feel an infinitesimal smallness in comparison to the vast universe; on the other, an extreme connectedness to this larger whole. But we counteract that bias by looking at nature—at things much bigger than us. Looking at the beautiful expanse of the sky is an antidote to the nagging pettiness of earthly concerns. And it is good and sobering to lose yourself in that as often as you can. This is why we need education, so that we might learn how to adjust our preconceived notions of the rational and irrational in harmony with nature.

Character is a powerful defense in a world that would love to be able to seduce you, buy you, tempt you, and change you. A priest puts on his collar. A banker wears an expensive suit and carries a briefcase. A Stoic has no uniform and resembles no stereotype. They are not identifiable by look or by sight or by sound. The only way to recognize them? Meditiations in this book are split up by seasons. There are meditations for each season, covering the four seasons.

Face the world with a new light with the help of these immortal thinkers and learn both to conquer yourself and to come to terms with those things which you cannot control. Stoicism is an active philosophy. That means that it is not enough to know its doctrines, one must also live them, develop habits that expand on and complete their ideas in practice. Practice, therefore, is also the focus of this book. The development of the reader's inner and outer life, that they may follow their own path and discover what it means to "live life in accordance with nature.

The book includes a general introduction to Stoicism that pulls no punches when faced with the more complex aspects of Stoic doctrine. Topics addressed include: The history of the ancient Stoics. The nature of good and evil, virtue and vice, and positive and negative externals.

The difference between those things in our control and those things not in our control. Stoic Logic and practical reasoning. Stoicism's role in the development of cognitive behavioral therapy CBT.

Stoic exercises and daily practice. Theology's role in Stoicism and Stoic cosmology. The book is a collection of Stoic sayings organized to allow daily reference and inspiration. Meditiations in this book are spl. But you still can't completely figure out why you feel as if none of the practices and exercises are working for you.

You feel as if you are not sure where your negative emotions are coming from, and you feel as if you have been practicing all your meditative exercises wrong. This feeling somehow is only getting worse by the day, and it's slowly starting to eat away at you. It's entirely reasonable if you are getting angrier from it. However, there is no reason to panic, and being angry is in no way something a practicing stoic should be feeling. And that is only one of the negative emotions you'll not be able to control when practicing stoicism incorrectly.

For the sake of time, I won't go into more detail and bore you. When anyone today says something really wise, the Stoics usually said it first. The Stoics were masters of perspective, always taking the long view while remembering that life is short. And they were deep and insightful students of human nature, understanding how we manage to make ourselves miserable as well as how we seek and can find fulfillment.

The great insights of the Stoics are spread over a wide range of ancient sources.