Stoicism: Practical Philosophy You Can Actually Use
Curated from: ryanholiday.net
Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:
3 ideas · 751 reads
But at the very root of the thinking, there is a very simple, though not easy, way of living. Take obstacles in your life and turn them into your advantage , control what you can and accept what you can't.
In the words of Epictetus :
"In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices."Amazingly we still have access to these ideas, despite the fact that many of the greatest Stoics never wrote anything down for publication. Cato definitely didn't. Marcus Aurelius never intended for Meditations to be anything but personal. Seneca's letters were, well, letters and Epictetus' thoughts come to us by way of a note-taking student.
Prussian King, Frederick the Great, was said to ride with the works of the Stoics in his saddlebags because they could, in his words, "sustain you in misfortune".
Meanwhile, Montaigne, the politician and essayist, had a line from Epictetus carved into the beam above the study in which he spent most of his time.
The founding fathers were also inspired by the philosophy. George Washington was introduced to Stoicism by his neighbors at age seventeen, and afterwards, put on a play about Cato to inspire his men in that dark winter at Valley Forge. Whereas Thomas Jefferson had a copy of Seneca on his nightstand when he died.
"We must all wear out or rust out, everyone of us. My choice is to wear out".
Today's leaders are no different, with many finding their inspiration from the ancient texts. Bill Clinton rereads Marcus Aurelius every single year, while Wen Jiabao, the former prime minister of China, claims that Meditations is one of two books he travels with and has read it more than one hundred times over the course of his life.
