Diaries of a Budding Stoic

Letter VI

We get to choose whether our pain helps us. All events are transformative, as everything is constantly going through the process of alteration and exchanging purposes freely, maintaining concordance with the law that binds them. While it is not our decision whether one thing or another stays this way or that for however long a time, we can be comfortable with those changes. Time is unbounded: a river, rushing past with the ease of each creation. Wanting to exert alteration for selfish purposes is to go against the current from which all occurrences spring. Giving into urges - that profound sense of wrongness manufactured from the false and unhappy version of you - does not help. You want to stop feeling miserable? Just look. The solution is right there in front of you, waiting to be seen. And yet by going only for what you want and what you think you deserve, you do not receive anything. The situation is no different - you can't escape from the water's grasp. It clings to you, pulls you in its direction. It's your job to float down without smashing into rocks. To cooperate with life is to see the good that is already within it, and the good that it continues to bring. But when you act against it - swimming for dry land or clinging stranded to a rock - you are merely a rat treading water, a horse without its feet.

There are so few pieces of our condition that we get to choose. The way we respond to its progression is one of them. So you should learn to love the process, however much you can. To not base your happiness and satisfaction on results, but in your commitment to the route you now follow. Every experience has shown itself tirelessly since the beginning. It's time you return the effort it deserves. And with this intention, keep these thoughts in mind:

1. That existence is subsistence. So long as you are living, you can be good. The virtue you embody will feel tender yet firm, bringing nourishment as you ensure its growth. Like fruit cultivated again and again in each passing season.

2. That all beings must endure. Resilience is the greatest strength one can attain. Do that, and you'll have no problem being at peace - accepting circumstances you cannot change and may not have otherwise desired.

3. To express gratitude for the forces that have brought about every beginning: the all-knowing and accommodating unending of ends, is to relieve yourself of the burdens unique to your own perceptions. There is a difference between recognizing the world's power and gifts in the times you should as opposed to only when it seems convenient to you. Knowing the difference prevents enslavement. It's no good being employed by unhelpful thoughts and perpetually mistaken grief.

Take this and rejoice. Grace is always an option, even with our confines - white wood and lumps of meat, bounded by fabrics of fiber and skin. We can change the outlook of our experience. No matter how unpleasant our situation may seem.