Serenity in the Marketplace: Stoic Calm for Everyday Life

Salutations everyone, it's January the 11th and today I make decisions from clarity rather than fear or urgency. I make decisions from clarity rather than fear or urgency. I make decisions stoic, if you want to be unsteady. For if a person shifts their caution to their own reason choices and the acts of those choices, they will at the same time gain the will to avoid. But if they shift their caution away from their own reason choices to things not under their control, seeking to avoid what is controlled by others, they will then be agitated, fearful, and unstable. Epictetus Discourses 2.1.12. The image of the Zen philosopher is the monk up in the green, quiet hills or in a beautiful temple on some rocky cliff. The Stoics are the antithesis of this idea. Instead, they are the men in the marketplace, the senator in the forum, the brave wife waiting for her soldier to return from battle, the sculptor busy in her studio. Still, the Stoic is equally at peace. Epicetus is reminding you that serenity and stability are results of your choices and judgment, not your environment. If you seek to avoid all disruptions to tranquility, other people, external events, stress, you will never be successful. Your problems will follow you wherever you run and hide. But if you seek to avoid the harmful and disruptive judgments that cause those problems, then you will be stable and steady wherever you happen to be. So it doesn't matter where you are, whether you go to a monastery and you meditate for 23 hours a day or if you work in a factory for 14 hours a day. It's all about your mindset and controlling what you can control. The place doesn't make it you make it it's about what and who you are on the inside and how you use the practices and the toolbox that you have built over the years months days whatever to keep you moving forward have a good day, you.