WHY STOICS ?

                                                


                               
                                                           NEERAJ MAHAJAN





What is a Stoic? A person above pleasure or pain. Does that make stoics superhuman or demigods? No in fact they are every bit humans in flesh and blood with the only difference in the way they have trained their minds with mindfulness, perseverance, and tenacity. The greatest of stoics is Marcus Aurelius Seneca. He took care and made great effort to pen them down in his letters to his son Lucilius Annaeus Seneca despite his bad health in book LETTERS FROM A STOIC. Some of the most relevant and my favorite collection of quotes are enumerated under. why I find them important is because each one of us is facing challenges in various spheres of our daily lives and his versatile teachings are a huge source of guidance and inspiration for all of us in daily life viz:

1. It is paramount to avoid utterance of plaintive notes if things go against us in life.

2. Money making activities are our apprenticeships and not our real work. Time should be spent on them only so far as one's mental abilities are not so high.

3. Recollecting of past and future troubles should be banned as they weaken our souls and in the grip of difficulties one should say :: There may be pleasure in the memory of even these events one day.

4. We take our cues from other people in the way we feel About Pain, luxury, money, and power.

5. There is a comforting thing about extremities of pain: if you feel it too much you are bound to stop feeling it. This is called dazed stupefaction.
6. Life itself id slavery if the courage to die is absent.

7. The important thing in life is to live in dignity or die in a courageous, enlightened, and honorable manner.
 and there are many more but my battery is running out.
Also please remember Seneca was a wealthy philosopher who kept his wealth and was sentenced to death by cruel Roman king Nero for a suspected affair which he ungrudgingly accepted.

 thnx for reading my blog.


PICTURE CREDIT: MATT FLORES at UNSPLASH

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