i’ve been thinking a lot lately about my love of stoicism.  I began my love affair back in my junior year of college, about ten years ago.

I was an exchange student of sorts in Zagreb, Croatia at the time.  I was really questioning my faith in a personal deity.  There was an english bookstore in one of the hotels in downtown, and I loved to go in, grab a newspaper or book and chill out.

One day I happened upon ‘The Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius.  Almost immediately, I was drawn to the posture I read about in the pages of this 2k year old memoir of sorts.

What was so attractive?  One quote stuck out at me:

Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation.

WOW!  I had been fighting for SO long over my religious quandry:  to believe in a god I didn’t to keep my friends, my career, my girlfriend, etc, or to follow my reason and jettison an ancient structure of beliefs that no longer seemed relevant?

As I read the meditations, I began to see another way:  to rely on MYSELF, on my rational faculty, and to begin to stand upright on my own.  And that’s exactly what I did.  I came home to the States 3 months early and braved what was the harded period in my young life.  I lost friends, a career, lots of experiences, and had crippling moments of doubt.

Would I go back?  Nope.  I now see that there are only so many things I can change in this world.  Those things I have control over are limited to myself.  All else comes as it does, and accepting it and moving with it make for a more calm, pleasurable human existence.  No longer do I worry that a pugnacious and petulant god is punishing me for whatever reason by ruining my earthly existence.  Negative AND positive outside circumstances come and go, and only my equanimity is in my grasp.

Living naturally, or going with the flow of nature, provides a reasonable and rational existential stance toward the world that allows us to truly enjoy the ‘play’ of life in ways that few other philosophies allow.  Far from being dour, depressed etc, Stoicism provides us with a beautiful tool for dealing with anything that comes our way.

thanks for listening,

Brett