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Except for Stoic sages no one’s life is going to be consistently pleasurable. Even people who are living in the moment of now in the glow of perfect harmony with the reality they are immersed within are living the Stoic’s philosophy without knowing it. Problems come to us all, but with the right relationship to them they are welcome pleasures. The question then becomes how do we put ourselves into a relationship with our core selves and our external world that creates and maintains the harmonious balance that results in personal pleasure. How can we always be getting what we want? The answer is simple, but the acceptance of it requires some growing through what will be thought of at the time as fearful, painful and erroneous experiences. In the end, however, if we learn to accept past things as they have been, and as now beyond any personal influence, and therefore become content with them, then we can take pleasure in them. And similarly with the future, when we accept that there are many things, in fact almost everything, that we cannot influence, then we can be content with what they will be. These two realms of possible contentment, the past over which we have no influence and the future over which we have no influence, comprise almost everything. Our non-influence over the Universe is asymptotically close to absolutely everything. When we accept this obvious fact we can easily accept contentment with those things, and place our attention and efforts on those things over which we might have some influence. How can we be content with the horrors that have happened in history and will with little doubt happen again, even now? We choose to accept the reality that has existed, exists, and will exist and be content with it.

 

 

 

A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. Nassim Taleb