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Practice like a Stoic: 3, Take an outside view
We react differently whether the same thing happens to us or someone else
[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics — How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 15–19 of the paperback edition.]
“It is in our power to discover the will of nature from those matters on which we have no difference of opinion. For example, when another man’s slave has broken the wine cup, we are very ready to say at once, ‘Such things must happen.’ Know then that when your own cup is broken, you ought to behave in the same way as when your neighbor’s was broken. Apply the same principle to higher matters. Is another’s child or wife dead? Not one of us but would say, ‘Such is the lot of man’; but when one’s own…
