The Magic Weapon No One Talks About

Stoicism and Epictetus

It’s harder than ever not to complain.

Our whole world is used to comfort, and as complacent 21st-century individuals, we’re accustomed to things being really smooth.

When you go to try and unlock your phone, you expect that it’ll open no problem. Just like your wifi should connect, and traffic needs to be bearable.

I’m with you, not getting temporarily annoyed at things is hard. For example, I currently have a contact wedged up in my eye, and I’m having a hard time not freaking out. (I wish I were kidding, there’s literally a contact stuck in my right eye). But as a technologically advanced civilization, we often forget to acknowledge: life is not hard at all.

Take my little conundrum… I went on google and searched “stubborn contact stuck in my eye” and found a whole bunch of articles, and now I’ve turned my kitchen into a laboratory to create a sterile saline solution (it’s not as fancy as it sounds)… but (hopefully) in 34 minutes or so, my eye should be contact-free.

There’s so many little nuances in our day-to-day that aren’t worth emotionally investing in, or complaining about. In today’s day and age, we’ve never been so desperately in need of stoicism.

It’s an age-old philosophy that everyone from kings to slaves practiced back in the old days (and I’m talking way back in time). It is a way of life that promotes good behaviour, the ability to deal with…