“Drama, combat, terror, numbness, and subservience — every day these things wipe out your sacred principles, whenever your mind entertains them uncritically or lets them slip in.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 10.9
We have our own challenges raging inside of us. The battle rages every day in our mind, as we struggle to maintain control over our thoughts and emotions, and as we try to understand the difference between what we can control and what we can’t. Life comes at us fast. We have plenty of our own drama. It’s hard enough as it is.
And then come lovers, bosses, and friends — with their drama. And of course they want to share it with us, and they want us to weigh in. They want to make their drama into ours, and they want us to tell them what they should do.
On top of that, we’re exposed to more worries and angst on the nightly news. And we read about celebrity-this and famous-person-that who has their personal conflict and drama. And we shouldn’t care, but still we read about it, and wonder about it. As if we aren’t already drowning!
You don’t have to accept this. There’s no way to completely avoid it, but you don’t have to let the drama in. You can stop it cold in its tracks, deny it entry into your brain. That’s what The Daily Stoic recommends in today’s entry.
You can remember to protect your mind from abuse, and refuse to let these external influences touch your psyche.
You can cut the noise and just tune all these inputs out, completely. It’s very hard for me to do this, I’ll admit — I’m a news junkie and I tend to invite the noise in. But I need to do the opposite. You can do it too.
Remember, it’s perfectly okay to be clueless — you don’t have to know exactly what’s happening in the world at all times, or what is happening in Hollywood. Most of that information doesn’t affect you directly anyway, so you can just be okay with not knowing. You are allowed to not be up-to-date on the latest stuff. You can not let the drama in. Try it!
