Steady in the Storm: Choosing Virtue with Courage

Salutations everyone, it's January 10th and today I choose the path of virtue when it requires patience and courage. I choose the path of virtue even when it requires patience and courage. I choose the path of virtue even when it requires patience and courage. And for the Daily Stoic? If you want to be steady, the essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice, just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil, in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material. For if judgments about the material are straight, that makes our choices good. But if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad. Epictetus, Discourses 129.1-3 The Stoics seek steadiness, stability, and tranquility. Traits most of us aspire to but seem to experience only fleetingly. How do they accomplish this elusive goal? How does one embody estuthia, which means the teachings of epiketis? Well, it's not luck. It's not by eliminating outside influences or running away to quiet and solitude. Instead, it's about filtering the outside world through the straightener of our judgment. That's what our reason can do it can take the crooked confusing and overwhelmingly nature of external events and make them orderly however if our judgments are crooked because we don't use reason then everything that follows will be crooked and we will lose the ability to steady ourselves in the chaos and rush of life. If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way. Have a good day.