“Another has done me wrong? Let him see to it. He has his own tendencies, and his own affairs. What I have now is what the common nature has willed, and what I endeavor to accomplish now is what my nature wills.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.25
If someone insults us, wrongs us, slights us… there’s really no benefit to getting worked up and outraged. Getting outraged is a pretty popular thing these days (over pretty much anything, it seems) but there’s not any particular benefit to reacting that way. You lose control, you feel terrible afterward — and you might have done something stupid out of spite that you now regret, and might even have to apologize. Why bother with all that? Let it go, and skip the revenge.
In explaining the quote above in his book, the author Ryan Holiday tells us about Abraham Lincoln, who wrote furious letters to the people he was upset with, and then never sent them. That seems like a fine idea to me. Just like that long, fiery email that you write and then sleep on overnight — and in the morning you decide to not send it after all. It allows you to blow off some steam, and get some things off your chest, without doing something that’s going to end up hurting you more in the end. “You almost always end up with regret,” as Holiday says. And you have nothing really to gain from clicking the Send button. Some things are truly better left unsaid.
Think about the times you did blow up, and really just let someone have it. The times when you retorted angrily or struck back in some fashion. Did that work out well for you? Were you happy afterward? Of course not. You always just end up feeling worse. And that’s the point of today’s entry in The Daily Stoic book: don’t hate the haters — just let it go instead.
