Simple Stoic Advice
Tranquility from indifference
Tranquility from indifference
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.18:
Quote
“The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.”
Advice
Often in life, and more often than we like to admit, we care about how others view us. We do not want to look bad to others because deep down, on a primal level, we feel as though we will be tossed from the “tribe” and forced to fend for ourselves. And as all early humans discovered, we have more power in numbers (such as our tribe) than by ourselves.
Here, Marcus references the sentiments of Epictetus’ Dichotomy of Control as well as the value-judgments we make about external things.
Epictetus famously declared that:
“Some things in the world are up to us, while others are not. Up to us are our faculties of judgment — motivation, desire, and aversion — in short, everything that is our own doing.”
With the understanding of the Dichotomy of Control came the determination in value-judgments for things external from us. According to the Stoics, externals were either Good, Bad, or Indifferent. But indifference does not mean a lack of care, rather, it means that the external could be good or bad, we just don’t quite know in the moment as it is dependent upon other things.
Marcus sums up these sentiments when he writes to himself in book three of Meditations:
“Adorn thyself with simplicity and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice.”
Our ultimate goal of living a good life, of perfecting our character, these are not dependent upon externals. Held within each and every one of us is the ability to grow and maximize our potential. Thus, externals do not matter unless we let it destroy our character.
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