Why get angry at things, if anger doesn’t change it?
Why am I telling myself that I’ve been harmed?
Will I even remember this fight in a few months?
Stoicism is a practice as much as it is a philosophy. Like most people, I know you’re not supposed to react emotionally to things, but again, like most people, that rarely stops the anger from rising up inside us and fantasizing about revenge. Nor is there any “ownership” of the ideas. It is instead a tradition where one repeats and refines the same basic premises as we struggle to understand and apply them.
It was Epicurus, Seneca’s favorite philosopher to quote despite their disagreements, who had said that vain was the word of the philosopher that does not heal the suffering of man.
Anger, as we all know, is something we suffer like a fever. It consumes us, takes over our body, and changes the very temperature at which we operate.
“The person who does wrong, does wrong to themselves. The unjust person is unjust to themselves — making themselves evil.”Marcus Aurelius