“Frame your thoughts like this — you are an old person, you won’t let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you’ll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 2.2
We are in charge — not our impulses. We’re not puppets, and we don’t have to react in ways that the world says we should. Further, we are not slaves to fear, or to any emotion at all, really. We make our own decisions, and we won’t let ourselves get yanked around any longer by our impulses, or the events of the day.
We know that anger is a weakness, and that we don’t have to tumble into rage just because someone wrongs us. We have a choice of how we’re going to react, and that gives us all the power we need. As we respond to the day’s events, we don’t have to do anything or feel anything in particular simply because the old familiar trigger presents itself — we have a choice when it comes to our reaction. (That’s the wisdom from today’s entry in The Daily Stoic.)
This is why I’ve recently drastically restricted my intake of caffeine, alcohol, and other stimulants. At times I’ve gone completely cold turkey. Why? Did I have a problem? Not really.
I just realized that these things were affecting my ability to calmly and rationally decide how I wanted to react to any given situation. I didn’t want to be “pulled” any more than I already am by my emotions. Being dependent or under the influence of these external chemicals was affecting my ability to think clearly and without constraint, so I decided I wasn’t going to be enslaved or pulled like a puppet by them anymore. So I cut them out.
Great post! Temperance being one of the four virtues, they were able to see how these stimulants controlled emotions. You have great willpower to cut all of those out! I am slowly creeping that way
Thanks man, it hasn’t been easy, but the liberation that comes from cutting those things out is very powerful. I’m up here in the Pacific Northwest, and the cold dark gray is never-ending. “Crutches” don’t help with that, they just make it worse.