“Heraclitus would shed tears whenever he went out in public — Democritus laughed. One saw the whole as a parade of miseries, the other of follies. And so, we should take a lighter view of things and bear them with an easy spirit, for it is more human to laugh at life than to lament it.”
SENECA, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND, 15.2
When life is unfair, and shit happens, you just gotta laugh. That’s essentially the message of today’s page in The Daily Stoic, more or less — and a very simple message it is! We know this intuitively, but we forget sometimes and need reminding.
You have a choice: to drown in your sorrows and let life’s unfairness overwhelm you — or to just laugh at the craziness of it all, and how little control you have in the grand scheme of things.
When you’re ‘not sure whether to laugh or cry’, choose the option that will make you feel better, not worse. Choose the option that will lighten up your worldview.
Who said that stoics were all dry and serious? Well, sometimes we are, I suppose. But stoics are also full of joy (albeit different from what you’re thinking). And we definitely know how to laugh.
After all, one of the core tenets of stoicism is that the only thing we can control is how we react. So choose to react in a lighthearted way when life goes sideways, and laugh if you can!
