1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

You likely know that Stoicism is guided by four central virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Justice, and Temperance.

These aren’t abstract ideals. They’re qualities we’re meant to practice daily if we wish to embody the character of a Stoic.

The four virtues trace back to Plato’s Republic, where he described them as the foundation of a well-ordered soul and society. The Stoics later adopted them as the heart of their philosophy.

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Hi all,

This week’s Snippets include an essay on other people’s anger, a documentary recommendation, and more.

I hope you find something useful to take into the week ahead.

☀️ Reflection: You Have a Lot to Offer

The Nobility of Enough
True generosity doesn’t depend on wealth—it depends on what you’re willing to give. This reflection highlights a nomadic family in the Sahara, whose hospitality exemplifies the Stoic lesson from Epictetus: owning little allows you to offer much, and service to others is the measure of a life well-lived.

📌 Stoic Reminder

😡 New Post on Substack

Why THEIR Anger Isn’t YOUR Problem
What do we do when someone else’s anger, judgment, or forgiveness is beyond our control?

This piece uses Epictetus’s image of the fig tree and Musonius Rufus’s response to exile to show why patience is central to Stoic practice. We can apologise, act honestly, and keep tending our own character—but another person’s inner life ripens on its own schedule.

📺 Documentary Recommendation

The Present
This documentary begins with a quote that Stoics like Seneca said in various different ways:

It’s not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.

It’s the story of Dimitri Poffé, a 34-year-old French traveler who left France to undertake a cycling trip from Mexico City to Ushuaia after he tested positive for Huntington’s disease.

A cycling trip won’t be everyone’s ideal way to add life to their years, but this film will surely make you consider what is.

🎙 Latest Podcast Episode

Your Bonus Life Begins Now
This episode explores gratitude as a Stoic practice, emphasizing the transformative power of attention.

By imagining what we might have already lost—or even our own death—we can reawaken appreciation for ordinary moments: a conversation, a child’s question, a walk with a pet.

Marcus Aurelius calls this the “bonus” life, a reminder that presence and awareness turn the everyday into something precious.

📜 Quote For The Week

If the body can be trained to such a degree of endurance that it will stand the blows and kicks of several opponents at once and to such a degree that a man can last out the day and resist the scorching sun in the midst of the burning dust, drenched all the while with his own blood,—if this can be done, how much more easily might the mind be toughened so that it could receive the blows of Fortune and not be conquered, so that it might struggle to its feet again after it has been laid low, after it has been trampled under foot?

—Seneca, Letters 80.3

All the best for the week ahead,
Allan

1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

The ancient Stoics took duty seriously.

They believed each of us has responsibilities—to ourselves and to others—and that we should try to meet them as well as we can.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that our life is nothing more than the sum of our individual actions. If that’s true, then each small act matters.

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1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

As students of Stoicism, we don’t just read about the philosophy. We try to live it.

And whenever we practice something, we naturally want to improve.

The more we improve, the more we experience what the Stoics promised: greater peace of mind, resilience, courage, wisdom.

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The Stoic teacher Epictetus was once approached by a man with a very familiar problem.

His brother was angry with him.

This is one of those ancient situations that requires no historical imagination whatsoever. Remove the toga, add a snarky text message, a family WhatsApp group, or an awkward silence at Sunday lunch, and we’re right there.

The man wanted Epictetus to tell him how to make his brother stop being angry.

Epictetus began with a reminder that philosophy doesn’t magically give us control over external things:

Philosophy doesn’t promise to help anyone get anything external. If it did, it would be taking on something extraneous to the material that’s proper to it. Just as wood is a carpenter’s material, and bronze a sculptor’s, so each individual’s life is material for the art of living.

The man pressed the point. How could he use the material of his brother’s life to bring an end to the anger?

Epictetus clarified the matter. His brother’s life was material for his brother’s art of living. Not his.

To the man seeking advice, his brother’s anger was an external. Painful, perhaps. Frustrating, certainly. But still not something he could command.

We can’t enter another mind and start defusing its raging emotions. Disappointing, but true.

What the man could control was his own character, his own conduct, his own ruling centre. As Epictetus puts it:

Under all circumstances, I shall keep the command center aligned with nature. Whose command center? That of the individual in whom I am to be found.

This is one of the hardest Stoic lessons because it sounds simple until we need it.

Of course we can’t control another person’s anger. We know this.

Then someone becomes angry with us, and we immediately begin behaving as though there must be some secret combination of words which, if recited in the correct order, will fix things like a wizard’s spell.

We explain, defend, and replay the conversation.
We imagine the perfect sentence that will finally make them see.

Sometimes these efforts are useful. We may need to apologise, clarify, or make amends. Stoicism isn’t an excuse to shrug at the damage we cause and wander off looking philosophically detached.

But after we have done what is ours to do, the rest belongs to the other person.

Their anger, judgment, timing, willingness to soften—it’s all theirs.

This is where Epictetus calls for patience. When the man asks how he can remain in accord with nature even if his brother refuses to make peace, Epictetus answers with the image of a fig tree:

Anything of any importance takes time, even a bunch of grapes or a fig. If what you were telling me now was ‘I want a fig,’ I’d reply, ‘Be patient. First, let the tree flower and then fruit, and then wait for the fruit to ripen.’

A fig doesn’t ripen because we are in a hurry.

Neither does trust, forgiveness, or another person’s understanding. The tree has its own process. So does the human soul, which can be infamously less cooperative than a tree.

This doesn’t mean we become passive. It means we stop confusing influence with control.

We can speak honestly, apologise sincerely, and behave with consistency. All that is ours to do.

We can leave the door open, but we can’t drag another person through that door.

Musonius Rufus, another Roman Stoic, demonstrated the same principle on a much larger scale.

Like many philosophers of his era, he suffered under the whims of emperors and spent long periods in exile. Roman rulers often saw philosophers as threats. This was not entirely unreasonable. Philosophers had an irritating habit of saying true things out loud.

Vespasian banished Musonius from Rome, hoping perhaps to diminish his influence. But Musonius didn’t treat exile as catastrophe. Instead, he used it as material for philosophy:

Have I been deprived of freedom of speech? Have I been bereft of the privilege of saying what I think? Have you or anyone else ever seen me cringing before anyone just because I am an exile, or thinking that my lot is worse now than formerly? No, I’ll wager that you would say that you have never seen me complaining or disheartened because of my banishment, for if I have been deprived of my country, I have not been deprived of my ability to endure exile.

That final line matters. Musonius had been deprived of his country. He hadn’t been deprived of his ability to endure exile.

This is the Stoic distinction in plain form. Other people may decide where we live, what they think of us, whether they forgive us, whether they approve of us, whether they invite us back into the room.

But they do not decide whether we respond to these things with courage, patience, justice, and self-control.

Musonius makes the same point when he says that exile cannot prevent a person from possessing courage, justice, self-control, or understanding. If those virtues are present, exile cannot truly degrade us. If they’re absent, then the real harm comes not from exile, but from the poor condition of the soul that enters exile.

The same can be said of many ordinary troubles.

Being misunderstood doesn’t prevent us from being honest.
Being criticised doesn’t prevent us from being fair.
Being rejected doesn’t prevent us from acting with dignity.

Someone else’s anger doesn’t prevent us from keeping our own character intact.

This isn’t easy, though. It may be one of the least easy things in the world!

We want peace now. We want the fig now. We want the other person to understand now—right now. We want the story resolved before bedtime, preferably with a warm apology and a clear explanation of how right we were all along.

But people don’t ripen to our schedule.

We can make the apology, correct what needs correcting, and remain patient. We can refuse to become bitter while we wait. And if peace comes, we receive it gratefully.

If it doesn’t come, we still have our work, we always have our work.

Epictetus and Musonius remind us of the same enduring Stoic truth: each individual’s life is material for their own art of living.

Your brother’s anger is his material. Your exile is your material.

Your disappointment, your waiting, your uncertainty, your next choice: these are yours.

So don’t try to live another person’s life for them, it’s just not possible. Live your own as well as you can.

The fig will ripen when it ripens. In the meantime, keep on tending the tree.

By imagining what we might have already lost—or even our own death—we can reawaken appreciation for ordinary moments: a conversation, a child’s question, a walk with a pet.

Marcus Aurelius calls this the “bonus” life, a reminder that presence and awareness turn the everyday into something precious.

👇 👇 👇

📻 FOR MORE STOIC AUDIO CONTENT

Check out one of my latest daily Micro Morning Meditations here on Substack:

☀️ Micro Morning Meditation: Let Us Cherish Old Age

https://whatisstoicism.substack.com/p/micro-morning-meditation-let-us-cherish

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

The writer William Zinsser once travelled to Timbuktu to witness camel caravans carrying salt across the Sahara.

He was thrilled by the sight of forty camels moving in unison across the vast desert. But it was another incident from the trip that impacted him the most.

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1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

When you hear the word courage, what comes to mind?

Fearlessness? Unshakeable confidence? Charging forward without hesitation?

But if courage were simply the absence of fear, it wouldn’t be much of a virtue. There would be nothing for us to overcome.

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1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

Let’s begin today with something a little different: a short breathing exercise.

It’s called the 4-7-8 method, developed by Dr. Andrew Weil as a simple relaxation technique.

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Hi all,

This week’s snippets include how to live like a philosopher, two kinds of joy, and more.

I hope you find these resources useful during the week ahead.

🌷 A Reflection: Plan Every Day as if it Were Your Last

Allow Yourself To Live
Being busy can look admirable, but Seneca warns that constant obligations can take us away from ourselves. This piece invites us to examine whether our days are truly meaningful or merely crowded, and to reclaim time for reflection, rest, and what actually matters.

📌 Stoic Reminder

📻 Podcast Update!

All episodes of The What Is Stoicism? Podcast can now be accessed directly in Substack.

There’s a handy page for each episode that lets you listen to the audio and gives the options to like or comment on it. Just check out the link above to access the full archive of 200+ episodes.

📑 Reading Recommendation

Two Kinds of Joy, Solitude, and Self-Improvement
Most people chase joy that depends on circumstances, but Seneca and William James point to something deeper here. This piece by explores “solemn joy”: a hard-won inner gladness that has faced sorrow, accepted difficulty, and no longer depends on fortune’s cooperation.

🎙 Latest Podcast Episode

Live Like a Philosopher
This episode returns philosophy to its ancient meaning: not something merely studied, but something lived.

Pierre Hadot shows that figures like Marcus Aurelius practiced philosophy through daily self-examination rather than abstract theory.

With four simple Stoic reminders—unity, moral good, human kinship, and the present moment—we offer a practical foundation for living like a philosopher.

📜 Quote For The Week

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close.

—Seneca, Letters 12.4

All the best for the week ahead,
Allan

1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

Did you wake up this morning with a quiet sense of dread about what lies ahead?

Perhaps there’s a meeting, a task, or a responsibility already casting a shadow over the day.

We often frame our mornings in terms of what we have to do. Rarely do we pause to notice what we get to do.

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1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

In his superb book Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot suggests that philosophical principles help us only when we keep them “within reach” through practice:

Attention allows us to respond immediately to events, as if they were questions asked of us all of a sudden. In order for this to be possible, we must always have the fundamental principles “at hand”.

We can rehearse those principles daily—testing them against irritations, disappointments, and decisions—until they sink beneath opinion and become part of our character.

Read more

Pierre Hadot shows that figures like Marcus Aurelius practiced philosophy through daily self-examination rather than abstract theory.

With four simple Stoic reminders—unity, moral good, human kinship, and the present moment—we offer a practical foundation for living like a philosopher.

👇 👇 👇

📻 FOR MORE STOIC AUDIO CONTENT

Check out one of my latest daily Micro Morning Meditations here on Substack:

☀️ Micro Morning Meditation: Let Us Cherish Old Age

https://whatisstoicism.substack.com/p/micro-morning-meditation-let-us-cherish

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 You can find the audio version of this morning’s contemplation below.

Good morning.

It seems to be accepted by many that the busier one is, the better. The person with packed days is admired for their productivity, their persistence, their passion.

But busy can too easily become too busy. When one commitment demands more and more of our time, other commitments—including time we should commit solely to ourselves—are bound to lose out.

It may seem like a luxurious problem to have, but it’s one that can afflict anyone.

The Stoic Seneca had this to say:

You will hear many of those who suffer from great prosperity cry out sometimes in the midst of their swarms of clients, or when they are pleading in court, or engaged in the other miserable tasks that bring them honour, ‘I am not being allowed to live!’ Of course they are not! All those who summon you to their aid are taking you away from yourself.

Sure, we can devote days to roles that might bring us some kind of renown, but how much meaning are we taking from those days? Are we prioritizing what’s important to us? Are we jamming too much into our days in the name of quantity, while unwittingly losing out on quality?

Seneca reminds us that life is short, that we have a responsibility to ourselves to use our time well:

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1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 Prefer to listen? The audio version is below.

Good morning.

Cato the Younger was, in many ways, the Stoic ideal. He was known for his moral integrity, his tenacity in supporting just causes and his immunity to bribes at a time when such corruption was commonplace.

Seneca would later advise using Cato’s character as a guideline, a standard against which to measure ourselves. He also suggested, however, that we might consider Cato too severe a model to follow. In which case, we’re free to select a less strict personality.

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1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 You can find the audio version of this morning’s contemplation below.

Good morning.

In the 15th entry of Book 10 of his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius seems to be giving himself a pep talk. In a few short sentences, the Roman emperor reminds himself of some key Stoic principles he needs to live by.

The passage begins with these points:

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Hi all,

This week’s snippets include effective strategies for chronic, the link between Jesus and Stoicism, and more.

I hope you find something you can carry into the week ahead.

📌 Stoic Reminder

📜 Book Review

Jesus and the Stoics: Not So Different?
Jesus and the Stoics may come from different traditions, but their ethical teachings often meet in striking ways. This piece is a short review of Jesus & Stoicism: The Parallel Sayings, a book that places those shared insights side by side without forcing them into sameness. It shows how both traditions, in their own ways, can guide readers toward patience, generosity, discipline, humility, and love.

📖 Reading Recommendation

CBT for Chronic Worry
Chronic worry can feel like preparation, but it often becomes a way of avoiding uncertainty. This piece from connects CBT and Stoic practice, showing how “worry time,” worry logs, and the dichotomy of control can shift anxious rumination into practical problem-solving.

The goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty, but to become less afraid of facing it.

☀️ A Reflection: Stoic Views On Desire

You Aren’t Last In The Race
Comparison can quietly turn abundance into poverty, making us feel deprived simply because someone else has more. This meditation uses Seneca’s advice to show how envy traps us in endless dissatisfaction, while Stoicism redirects desire toward what we can actually control: character, judgment, and better ways of living.

🎙 Latest Podcast Episode

Your Attention Is Your Life
This episode examines the attention we surrender to screens, busyness, and distraction.

Eric Pickersgill’s phone-free photographs reveal how strange our habits can look when the device disappears, while Seneca warns that constant bustle is often just a restless mind in motion.

The question isn’t whether modern life demands our attention, but whether we’re choosing where it goes.

📜 Quote For The Week

It’s enough if one’s current belief is true, if one’s current action has the common good as its objective, and if one’s current state of mind is willing acceptance of every externally caused thing that happens.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.6

Wishing you a great week ahead,
Allan

1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 You can find the audio version of this morning’s contemplation below.

Good morning.

In the third book of Epictetus’s Discourses, the ancient teacher gives a brief but memorable lesson on what it means to be a better person from the Stoic point of view.

The guidance begins with the imagined boasts of those who place a high value on status, and then takes a humorous turn:

Read more

1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 You can find the audio version of this morning’s contemplation below.

Good morning.

There are certain unwritten rules when it comes to arranging meetings and attending them. Not just work meetings, but casual ones too.

Being on time generally means arriving five minutes early. Keeping people waiting is deemed inconsiderate. Being late or not turning up at all without notifying the other attendees—unless some emergency has occurred—is rude and disrespectful.

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Jesus and the Stoics may not seem like obvious companions.

One belongs to a religion founded on divine revelation, the other to a philosophy grounded in reason.

And yet, as points out in her new book, when you place their ethical teachings side by side, something remarkable happens: they often seem to be pointing in the same direction.

Jesus & Stoicism: The Parallel Sayings places some of the strongest-matching verses from both traditions together. The book doesn’t deny the differences between the two, but does turn refreshingly away from the all-too-common modern tendency to be argumentative.

There’s no claim that Stoicism and Christianity are the same thing. We’re simply asked to accept their compatibility.

The result is an invitation to the reader to take their time. To read the parallel sayings slowly, and think about the significance of them arriving at such similar conclusions.

Surely that says something about the human experience? Surely it’s important that such advice can still apply 2,000 years later?

The book isn’t merely a modern matching of quotations. Stoicism was “in the air” of the first-century Mediterranean world, and Polat gives enough background to show why these traditions can be read together without forcing the comparison.

To give you an idea what to expect, here are a few of my favorite parallel sayings from the book.

If anyone sues you to take away your coat, let him have your cloak also. Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and don’t turn away him who desires to borrow from you.

—Matthew 5.40–42

However quick he may be, a man gives too late when he must be asked to give. We should, instead, guess what each person needs, and when we have discovered this, set them free from the hard necessity of asking. You may be sure that a benefit which comes unasked will be delightful and will not be forgotten.

—Seneca, On Benefits 2.2

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be given to you. For with the same measure you measure, it will be measured back to you.

—Luke 6.38

I will view all lands as though they belong to me, and my own as though they belonged to all human kind. I will live so as to remember that I was born for others, and will thank Nature on this account: for how could she have done better for me? She has given me alone to all, and all to me alone. Whatever I may possess, I will neither hoard it greedily nor squander it recklessly. I will think that I have no possessions so real as those I have given away to deserving people.

—Seneca, On the Happy Life, 20.3–4

Enter in by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter in by it. How narrow is the gate and the way is restricted that leads to life! There are few who find it.

—Matthew 7.13–14

You can pass your life in a constant state of happiness if you walk the right path, and think and act in the right way.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.34

The strength of Jesus & Stoicism is its simplicity.

It doesn’t over-explain: the parallel texts do much of the work, giving the reader space to notice, compare, and reflect.

That makes it suitable not only for reading straight through but for dipping into slowly—as a devotional, a study aid, or even a source of daily reflection.

This book will especially appeal to practicing Stoics curious about Christianity, Christians interested in ancient philosophy, and readers who are less concerned with winning theological arguments than with becoming more patient, generous, sincere, and peaceful.

I see the questions resurface often: Can a Christian be a Stoic? Can a Stoic be a Christian? This is bound to be a useful book for anyone trying to decide.

I think what Jesus & Stoicism does best is remind us that wisdom traditions aren’t ancient texts or museum pieces. They’re meant to be lived.

Whether the reader comes to the book as a Christian, a Stoic, both, or neither, the effect is the same: a renewed sense that the good life asks for humility, compassion, discipline, and love.