Mini Monday Motivation: First Do No Harm (November 11, 2024)

"Don't let it bother you," said the one. Said the other, "Don't tell me how to feel." Despite the current resurgence of Stoicism, not everything we feel is in our control. And it never was.

Stoicism in its most simplistic form has become so popular of late that many people think nothing should ever bother us. But that's a mistake.

Even Seneca acknowledges that emotions are in part beyond our control, having three stages, the first of which is unavoidable:

The first impulse of the mind is not something we can escape by reason, any more than the body’s reactions we have mentioned, such as wanting to yawn when someone else yawns, or blinking our eyes at the sudden approach of someone’s fingers.¹

Euripides knew this:

Take courage, my child, and do not let your body be so troubled.
With calm and a noble spirit, you will more easily bear your sickness.²

The key here is “more easily.” It still may not be easy, just easier.

Particularly on this Veterans’ Day in the US, as we think of the tragedy of war and the sacrifice of soldiers — but also in the context of more mundane day-to-day life — let us not be misled into thinking that our pain is our own fault because we should be able to control it. It’s not.

Some emotional pain is unavoidable. The very least we can do — and sometimes the very most — is not make things worse by imagining that it’s in our control to make things better.

1. “Primum illum animi ictum effugere ratione non possumus, sicut ne illa quidem quae diximus accidere corporibus, ne nos oscitatio aliena sollicitet, ne oculi ad intentationem subitam digitorum conprimantur.” De Ira, 2.4.2. 1st c. CE.

2. θάρσει, τέκνον, καὶ μὴ χαλεπῶς
μετάβαλλε δέμας:
ῥᾷον δὲ νόσον μετά θ᾽ ἡσυχίας
καὶ γενναίου λήματος οἴσεις. Hippolytus 207. 5th c. BCE.