I Am Given a Beautiful Cup
My sticky notes from How to Live Like a Stoic, by Tom Hodgkinson:
On staying out of politics:
Seneca is well aware of the conventional Stoic view that people should engage in public service ... However he then argues that by retiring from the hurly-burly -- in other words becoming an idler -- is itself a form of service. ... "When we [Stoics] enjoin service to the state, we not not mean just any state nor that one must serve at all times or without ending. Besides, we assign to the wise man a state worthy of him, that is, the whole world. This he is not outside the state even if he does retire."
Seneca on retirement:
Even if we try no other medicine, withdrawal in itself will be beneficial: we will be better when alone. Moreover, then we may withdraw among the best men and choose some example towards which we may turn our lives. This only comes about in leisure.
On loss:
I am given a beautiful cup. I drop it onto the kitchen floor and it smashes into a million tiny pieces. This makes me sad. But I'm only sad because I have chosen to be sad. I could equally choose not to be sad. If I'd been indifferent to the cup, then I might have been able to bear its loss with an even temper. So if you cultivate the doctrine of adiaphora or "indifferents," the Stoics promise, then you will float around the world in a state of Zen detachment.
On mental freedom/dexterity:
[the weak man] is a slave to his pathe or emotions. These are the mind forg'd manacles, in Blake's famous phrase, that must be cast off. In theory then, the slave could be free and the free man could be a slave. The rich man could be in trawl to his possessions and the emotional man in thrall to his passions. Neither is in control. By contrast the slave could be joyfully manacled.
On not having too much dignity:
The great example of the free speaker in antiquity is our friend Diogenes. Having freed himself from the need to flatter, and become shameless, he was able to tell the truth, to stand up to power. He would spit at the rich people in the street, gatecrash parties and do nothing all day. This is because he had no need of money or status. When you depend on an employer, perhaps for your mortgage payments, you will refrain from criticising them, unless you are exceptionally bold.
Étienne de La Boétie on the internal adjustment:
You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
Instead of the usual so-called aims of life:
Instead you should cultivate your inner daimon, your peaceful essence.