“Whenever disturbing news is delivered to you, bear in mind that no news can ever be relevnt to your reasoned choice. Can anyone break news to you that your assumptions or desires are wrong? No way! But they can tell you someone died — even so, what is that to you?”
EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.18.1-2
(Aside: It’s pretty hilarious to see “No way!” in the translation of the quote above. I guess they’re trying to make it feel more natural.)
The point of today’s entry in The Daily Stoic is that when you hear about sad or disturbing news, it shouldn’t affect your choices or decision-making, nor should it take you off your chosen course.
Expressing sympathy isn’t wrong of course, but it doesn’t really do anything to help the situation, and it more than likely takes you off course personally.
It’s not that a stoic should refuse to care about these things. But “mindless, meaningless sympathy”, as author Ryan Holiday puts it, doesn’t really achieve anything or help anyone. It does affect your peace of mind, however, and that’s not helpful.
If you can help, then by all means help the people affected by the bad news. Otherwise, let it go, and get back to your duty and your focus for the day.
The curse of the news junkie
Personally, I’ve been quite the news junkie for a long time.
It’s at least partly due to the fact that I studied communications and journalism in college, but I can’t use that as an excuse. I’m just kind of addicted to reading the news. From multiple different sources, across many different topics, for much of the day. I’ve always held that that’s not wrong, not something to be ashamed of, — perhaps even something to be proud of.
I’ve also lived a good part of my life outside the United States, and so I feel like an international citizen, and I want to know what’s happening in the world. That’s the part that sounds good and high-minded, haha.
But I can’t hide from the fact that I have an almost macabre fascination with disaster, and just bad news in general. (Isn’t almost all news bad news, though?) I find myself drawn to the borderline-tabloid news sources, and the click-baity ones, although I’ve gotten a lot better at not reading those articles anymore. I’ve completely cut myself off from “Person Does Something Terrible to Another Person” articles, since I could tell they were bad for my soul. I don’t miss them. So that’s good at least.
But I still read way too many news articles. And it’s just like Holiday indicates in today’s entry — I have no way to help, and probably no intention to help even if I could, so what’s the point? It just distracts me, and takes me off course, and causes me stress and anguish without an outlet.
It doesn’t do me any good, and probably does me harm. I’m going to have to find a way to cut way back on my news reading, and maybe almost completely cut it out. Hmmm.
