The Hard Part Of Stoicism. What Determines Whether You’re A Slave Or A Free Man
You will ever remain a slave as long as you do not disentangle your relationship with the externals (stuff that you cannot control).
The only thing that you can really control is your choices.
The externals are many, basically everything. Your health, your wealth, the health of the people you love, the death of your loved ones, the way the world is being managed at the moment, natural disasters, your beauty, your success.
You are able to influence all of these, of course, but not ultimately control them.
You cannot get mad when you throw a die and you get a 4 instead of a 6. It’s irrational to be mad at chance.
The only thing that you can control is your volition/will. This is where the all-famous Stoic “freedom” lies.
Human life the Stoics appear to have considered as a game of great skill; in which, however, there was a mixture of chance, or of what is vulgarly under- stood to be chance. . . . If we placed our happiness in winning the stake, we placed it in what depended upon causes beyond our power, and out of our direction.
We necessarily exposed ourselves to perpetual fear and uneasiness,and frequently to grievous and mortifying disappointments.
