>>21243666
>>Dude...Dude... DUDE! It's called heckin STOICISM!!! It doesn't matter whether you're homeless or have cancer or your wife's bull beats you up or anything! Just heckin DON'T be sad and then life will magically feel fine!!!
I read Marcus Aurelius' 'Meditations' twice -- once when I was 16~ and the topic interested me, as I was a disturbed young man full of nervousness and anxiety. Many things said in it resonated with me, but I was not an analytical reader nor could I intelectually dive deeper into what the book was talking about. But I mostly agreed with its message -- man needed to be steadfast, calm and not give in to passions. I already act somewhat like that, so it was good, yes?
Few years later, at 20, I read the book again as I was working in a warehouse, 6 AM to 2 PM, after which I was too tired to do anything, but I still learned for University to not be behind. The warehouse wasn't a nice place, I operated old german sewing machines, I regularly pricked my fingers on hooks for material. My fingers went through 2-3 small adhesives tapes per day. They didn't even give us that, I had to buy the tapes for myself. I had minimal training and was the only man in that place, as everyone else were 35+ years old women. My employment there was an anomaly, but I needed money for university. So I worked there for almos two months.
The work was hard and very stressful. As I said, I had minimal training, because the woman that was supposed to train me got sick. So they just told me to do everything myself. Extremely stressful job. Plus the wounds to my fingers I took every day. I used to walk around my bed in my sleep, thinking I'm at the warehouse, operating the machine.
I'm talking about this, because it led me to reading 'Meditations' once again. And you know what?
I realized it was bullshit. It didn't help me at all, even when I reflected on Marcus' wisdom as I worked through the days, and it didn't help at all. It was difficult for me to understand why it didn't calm me at all, until I finally realized: One cannot force himself to feel diferently. I was already as stoic as I could, but that was mostly due to my rough upbringing and personality. I was already almost a saint, as close to a stoic ideal as person my age had any right to be. But I didn't work for it. Because 'stoics' aren't people who decided to be them. It's all backwards, people who are stoics think that's how you are supposed to deal with life, not understanding that it's already life that made them so.
It's basically just experience in action, a consequence of exposure to the less enjoyable moments in life. No book can made you stoic, if you are stoic you were already fucked up.
And then some normie idiot sees a stoic, how a man like that can go through hardships seemingly without problem and wants to be like that too, so he idealizes stoicism, not understanding one cannot force himself to feel in a certain way.