Speaker 1Hello, everybody. How are you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome to the introduction lecture for our chapter on daily or frequent philosophical practices. So I want to return a little bit to some sections from the syllabus today, because I do feel like this is hopefully going to be a turning point in the semester. And I've done this before with classes around this time. I think now is a good time to have this conversation, because ultimately, well, I hope, we've been approaching philosophy as a way of life, as the art of living, the art of thriving, and as a form of therapy through our classes and our work together thus far, right? So our philosophical meditations, you know, the questioning that we've hopefully been participating in, I've been doing the guided philosophical meditations on the podcast, because I think that's a valid and really important aspect of what philosophy as a way of life has to offer, right? This notion of using questions to turn our gaze inward, thinking about the things that we're doing. And I think that's a really important aspect of what philosophy as a way of life has to offer, right? This notion of using questions to think about ourselves, to turn our gaze to the world around us, and, you know, question it, not just accept it, to examine it. And then, of course, strive to improve it. And also, you know, in doing so, that is dragging these questions inward, we also strive to improve ourselves, right? I hope, you know, I've been really happy so far with how the take-home writing exercises have gone. I hope they've been meaningful for all of you. But even our approach to that, right? It's not just you interpreting the text. The questions, of course, are, you know, what does it say? What does it mean? How can I apply it? And why does it matter? Like, what difference does it make in my life? Or what difference could it make in someone's life? Or what difference could it make for the, you know, for the world, for society, have, you know, have been really good questions that a number of you have addressed when we examine and we include things from the bibliotherapy book. So I firmly believe, and I hope we feel the same way, that we've kind of been doing this already, right? Which is to say, we haven't just been looking at philosophy as a set of ideas. And collections are a collection of writings that we have to memorize and only examine, right? The application is really where I think a lot of the magic happens, right? With philosophy. Philosophy is about living, right? We think in order to live. And we think, you know, in different ways to obviously alter, change, grow, transcend, right? Spiritual transfiguration is the aim here, right? I want to share some parts of the syllabus. I think that they really highlight the importance of this. And it kind of encourages me, and I hope, you know, it encourages all of you to, you know, to see why we want to adopt a practice as a result of this series of lectures, right? So we're about a month into the semester, and I like to schedule this conversation roughly halfway through the semester, if not a little bit sooner, because one of the final things we're going to do with our take-home exercise due at the end of the semester is I do ask that you adopt a practice. And I think the earlier you adopt it, the better, because you can make it work for you. If I offer in the following lectures, you can make your own. You can take it as inspiration. You can follow it, you know, exactly the way I present it. But either way, the hope is that we move towards examining and then choosing some type of practice, right? We have to take care, you know, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, we have to take care of our spiritual body. The following lectures are about techniques for that, because we need methods, right? So I hope that the few sections I'm going to share with you today are going to help you with that. So I hope that the few sections I'm going to And I think these thoughts also get us moving, you know, towards a space of encouragement about, you know, why we should even bother with this. Why, you know, because it's not a normal request necessarily, right? We're moving beyond just writing a paper that gets a grade or what have you, right? I'm really asking that for the final work in your paper, you're describing an experience, right? You're describing a way that you've either changed your daily life or you're describing a way that you've changed your maybe new philosophical perspectives on something that you currently have in your daily life that would connect in some way to this notion of a spiritual philosophical practice, right? Methods for transforming ourselves in this way. So on that note, let me read a few sections here from Pierre Hadeau, his piece, Philosophy as a Way of Life, that I hope will highlight some of these concepts for us. So he tells us, quote, The goal of which was to achieve a state practically inaccessible to mankind, wisdom. Philosophy was a method of spiritual progress, which demanded a radical conversion and transformation of the individual's way of being. It was a way of life, both in its existence and effort to achieve wisdom and its goal, wisdom itself. For real wisdom does not merely cause us to know, it makes us be in a different way. Wisdom was viewed in the ancient world as a way of life, which brought peace of mind, inner freedom, and a cosmic consciousness. All three of those things are things we can and hopefully will pursue with our practice. First and foremost, philosophy presented itself as a therapeutic, intended to cure mankind's anguish. It was a method for, again, achieving independence and inner freedom. Philosophy, however, we are not dealing with the mere creation of a work of art, let's say, just to, you know, apply to the class. We're not talking about just writing papers. The goal is rather to transform ourselves. Okay, there's a concern in this type of philosophy for living in the service of the human community and for acting in accordance with justice. Okay, this is an essential aspect of every philosophical life. So these are the key things, and hopefully some of this resonates, right? If you want to have more inner peace, take this seriously, right? If you want to work to create a more just society, philosophy will help us with that. The tools we're using, the tools of dialogue, of examination, of being consistent, of being focused, these are all things, they're all virtues, these are all skills that we can practice that will help us in pursuing these aims of ancient philosophy. And as we have in the first statement, right, it's an exercise-based pursuit. There are methods. That's what we're talking about in the following lectures. Various methods, various techniques and exercises to cultivate that inner freedom, that peace of mind, that cosmic consciousness, to pursue things like justice, truth, healing of ourselves and others. I'm not sure if you can hear that dog. I apologize. My window is open. That being said, the two general methods for this pursuit, we're going to be talking about a lot of self-writing, different practices, and also a lot of meditation. And we're defining meditation generally using the definition provided by Antisthenes, one of Socrates' students. When he was describing the benefit he got from philosophy, he pretty much said, I learned how to meditate, and he defined meditation as dialogue within oneself, right? So those are the two general approaches. Although there will also be other suggestions, I think, in terms of establishing practices of a philosophical nature that ultimately kind of connect to those things, but also, to an extent, stand on their own. So we'll have lectures preceding this one, where we'll have a general kind of historical background given of the Hellenistic schools from Pierre Hadeau's perspective, simply because a lot of what we're going to be studying is, again, coming from this ancient perspective of philosophy as a mode of therapy. And a lot of the thinkers will, you know, we're going to discuss will be from the Stoic school, from the Epicurean school. Some of them will be cynics as well. And we're going to also, of course, as always, have other philosophers and philosophies in the conversation as well. But I like some of the points that Hadeau raises, so we'll do a brief overview of that. We will also have single sort of sections, lectures on specific, hopefully succinct, tangible practices. And that's where I would like for all of you to really be thinking about, all right, what can I adopt? What do I want to try every day for the next couple weeks? See how it feels. What can I maybe shift about this practice to make it work for me? So as usual, we're going to get some general perspectives. But also this chapter and this series of lectures is really focusing on encouraging you to choose a practice that will work for you in whatever type of spiritual development you're looking to attain, right? So I hope this little intro was helpful and kind of giving us a little bit of a heads up in regards to what we're going to be discussing. Yeah, I look forward to this. And I look forward to hearing reflections. And if at any point you want to have a discussion about a specific practice that you maybe want to work on or some questions about how you can make it your own, please email me or we'll schedule a virtual meeting as well. And I'm really open to having that conversation. I think it's a really interesting conversation to have. So please feel free to reach out. And I hope you enjoy the following lectures. Thank you. So we have, as we always do, our philosophical meditation on daily or frequent philosophical practices. So I'm going to present all of you with some prompts and some questions like we do every week, and then a little bit of bibliotherapy. All right, so here we go with our first few prompts. Fill in the blank, or I guess finish the sentence. I most frequently listen to, I most frequently watch, I most frequently say. Thank you. The last time I sat or stood still and listened to nothing, watched nothing, and said nothing was... And try to think of a date and a time for that, if you can. I listen to the following every day. I read the following every day. I eat the following every day. I write the following every day. I say the following every day. The beautiful things I see every day are... The three biggest ways I waste time are... One, two, three. And for each. I can stop by... They are wastes of time because... I should stop because... Three quotes I live by are... And then for each. They are powerful because... Describe the three places where you spend the most time in the greatest way. Describe the greatest detail possible. Then write the aspects of these spaces that inspire you. And the aspects of these spaces that you might like to change. And why. Finish the sentence. I am grateful for... I am grateful for... Okay, so those are the prompts. Now let's do some questions. First one. How did you improve this month? What do you imagine most frequently? How do you... How do you plan your day? What is your morning routine? What is your night time routine? What is your night time routine? What are the questions you ask yourself most often? What are the questions you ask yourself most often? What are your most powerful and helpful habits? Okay, so let's now turn to the bibliotherapy a little bit. We're going to be getting some ideas here from Seneca. He tells us, quote, Try to perfect yourself if for no other reason in order that you may learn how to love. So this quote to me is a hugely powerful idea in regards to why you should care about philosophy and specifically why you should listen to these lectures the next couple of weeks and do the reading, right? Philosophy is a set of ideas and practices or techniques and tools to pursue spiritual transfiguration, right? Which is to say, to move forward towards goodness. So this idea of trying to perfect yourself, he doesn't say be perfect. It's in the trying that we find the meaning, right? We can think a little bit about our discussion of Sisyphus, right? That work of trying, that attempt, that constant, right, vigilance, watching over ourselves, our thinking, our feeling, our acting, making sure we're treating others justly, making sure we're treating ourselves justly, making sure we're doing our best to pursue truth through dialogue, right? Authentic dialogue. These are all pathways, as he's saying here, one, to learn how to love others, but also how to love ourselves. To ask ourselves the right questions and to do that as kindly as possible and as truthfully as possible with good intentions, right, of growth. That's to say, you know, to pursue perfection, right? The perfect truth, the perfect thing to do, the perfect way to think, the perfect way to feel. We don't really get perfect, right? Perfect doesn't exist, not in this earthly realm. We may argue, right? One might argue that, right? But to pursue that, we're learning how to practice philosophy, the love of wisdom, right? Literal etymological definition of philosophy is philosophia, right? To love wisdom. So you want to be better at cultivating self-love? We have a whole chapter on that. Adopt some of these practices. You want to be better at offering love to others and being lovable, right? Epictetus famously said, right, don't worry about other people loving you, but worry about being lovable. Because you can't control if they love you or not. But you can control what you offer the world. Again, we could argue with that as well, of course, as we've discussed in past episodes. But just for argument's sake, let's say we can at least aspire, right? Even that, right, to say to try. We can try to offer great things to the world. We can try our best to control ourselves and offer the best that we can. To what degree that's meaningful, it's up for debate. But I do think it's worth considering for sure. At least Seneca, I think, would argue that, right? And also, right, this is a great quote from Thich Nhat Hanh. When love stops growing, it starts to die. And again, we think about this with self-love and the love we have with others and the world. Striving for perfection, striving kind of towards goodness, right? That's growth. We are required to pursue growth if we want to love ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh is saying the same thing. It's a necessary element of loving ourselves and others is to pursue something that we love. To pursue something good. To pursue, let's for this, you know, in this case, say, to pursue perfection. We're learning in that pursuit how to care for ourselves, how to listen to ourselves, how to care for others, how to listen to others, how to be attentive. So when we practice something philosophically, where we have a daily practice, we're practicing that attention. We're practicing that listening. We're practicing, you know, that discipline. We're practicing taking action on how we think and feel by writing, by, you know, maybe even trying something new. It could be an example of this, right? We're moving out of our heads and our hearts and our souls, and we're moving into the world. So all these things connect really nicely, right? So what this chapter is asking us to do, too, is to take, you know, take new actions and to sit for a moment and write. That's a new action. To sit for a moment and do nothing else but think, well, we'll even characterize that as taking action, right? A new thing is what we're looking for here. A new habit to adopt. That's what I'm asking us to consider in this chapter. And for our final take-home exercise, I ask that we do this, right? So this quote is beautiful. It's a great example. Why bother with this? Well, you're learning how to love, and that's really important, obviously, right? So next one from Seneca. Make progress and, before all else, endeavor to be consistent with yourself. One of the virtues that we talked about in the self-writing guide, which I'm going to share that lecture again in this series of lectures the next couple weeks, and also we can always return to that, for those of you in my class, return to that on Blackboard, right? That short, I'll call it a book, that short book I shared with all of you. One of the virtues, you have to be consistent, right? So the title of this chapter on daily or frequent philosophical practices works that virtue in. And we're keeping in mind to be consistent with a philosophical writing practice will give us more than one benefit, right? So not only does it give us the benefit of working on the actual thing itself, right? Which is to say, maybe our practice, is to deal with being anxious. So instead of thinking about our thoughts, we learn how to turn to a notebook on a daily basis. We learn how to maybe even use our book from the class, right? To find quotes and ideas that we can write in our notebooks, that we meditate on, that are helpful for us, that remind us. We write our mantras that we use to redirect our thinking. We talk about the events and we write about the events that we're anxious about. And we test them for truthfulness, right? We can more clearly work with our questions that we talked about or with anxiety in our writing. Is it true? Is it happening? Is it real? Is it helpful? It meaning this line of thinking. As we're going to discover in later lectures in this series from Michel Foucault, self-writing is a tool in spiritual combat, right? It allows us to see the enemy, which might be this negative thinking we're having more clearly. And of course we want that, right? You wouldn't sign up for a boxing match and then be like, yeah, I'll blindfold myself, bad idea, right? So ultimately the writing is a powerful tool for seeing and understanding ourselves with greater clarity, right? So to sit down and write, we get that, but also we get better at that over time. We have to practice that pursuit of truth. We have to practice that pursuit of self-knowledge. We get better at it as we practice it, right? Not only that, so that's obviously the content. We might become less anxious. That's a beautiful thing. thing, but we're also going to become more disciplined because we're learning how to set time aside for an important task where we're not distracted. One of the other virtues in that book is be focused. So we're then, we're practicing being consistently focused on something. We're practicing consistently single tasking that will serve us in other parts of our lives if we transfer it, right? So if we see it's possible to sit for 10 minutes and write every day, sit for five minutes and write every day. We're practicing the skill of sitting down and giving something our full attention, which is very useful in everything we do in life, right? So no matter what else you're cultivating, again, the example I used was being less anxious. Maybe it's confidence. You want to do a confidence practice where you write and remind yourself of the times you've been competent, where you write at the end of each day and honestly scrutinize yourself, but kindly, and you see that you are competent on a daily basis and you should compliment yourself. You should cultivate confidence as a result of that. But maybe because you haven't been sitting down every day to consider it, you're leaving a lot of confidence on the table. Or let's say you're leaving a lot of evidence to cultivate healthier internal narratives, which will make you confident on the table. So maybe that's your water, right? Which is to say the water is the content and the cup is, once again, you're learning how to sit down and be disciplined and focus. Really useful. Another quote from Seneca, for what else are you busied with except for improvement? Proving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself. Now, he's asking us that question, right? Because it is a question. And I think as a Stoic, he would also definitely admit that a lot of things are out of our control. So of course, some, let's say, errors are not a result of our own doing, right? The Stoics believed in the power of the universe. They believed in notions of destiny. And they needed us to acknowledge what they were doing. And they needed us to acknowledge what they were doing. And they needed us to acknowledge what they were doing. And they needed us to acknowledge what they were doing. And they needed us to acknowledge what is and what is not in our control. So this question is almost a pathway to that, in a sense. To discover what we can and cannot control. And once we focus on what we can't control, those are things we can improve more easily. Again, if we are to agree with the Stoic perspective, which of course there are many others, right? And think about this too, right? I think, you know, the great example of a question of this question. I think, you know, the great example of a question of this question. I think, you know, the great example of a question of this question is that if you are to wake up every day and ask yourself, what can I learn today? Right? So to wake up and think, how can I improve today? I would say you pair that with the idea of how can I be of service today to the people around me and beyond perhaps, right? Those are good questions. All right. So again, what circumstances, what am I maybe attributing to circumstances that I can change? Another powerful question. Gives you more responsibility, also gives you more power. Let's go into the last quote here from Seneca. Let's go into the last quote here from Seneca. But as long as we wander at random, not following any guide except the shouts and discordant clamors of those who invite us to go in different directions, our short life will be wasted in useless wandering, even if we labor both day and night to get understanding. So we need to sit with ourselves to cultivate a sense of direction. I think goals are great. I think a large vision is great. We have to relate to those things, I think, in a way that's healthy for us, which is to say maybe in a way that's balanced for us. Because we can't, as he's saying here, don't be directionless. At least have an idea of where you're going. But I would add to this to not obsess over the goals, such that you don't take advantage of the moment, such that you don't find the moment to be joyful when it can be. But in order to make our own path, we have to sit with our own thinking, which is again why we might want to adopt a frequent or daily philosophical practice. Because a daily practice will keep us moving in that direction. So we need to sit down and write about cultivating a general sense of vision that's exciting for us, that pulls us forward. But if we have no sense of our own direction, nothing will really be all that meaningful because it won't feel like it's ours. So I would say Seneca would suggest that we adopt a practice to make sure we're not just doing things at random, but instead we're taking each day and we're giving it a sense of personal importance, a sense of meaning, a sense of intention. To hear maybe these shouts that he's mentioning, don't ignore things, but ultimately to understand that we can, to a large extent, at least I think from Seneca's perspective, control our interpretations and we can work to give ourselves a sense of direction. I think at the very least we could argue, especially from a Stoic perspective, that we can give ourselves a spiritual direction. I think at the very least we could argue, especially from a Stoic perspective, that we can give ourselves a spiritual direction. I will think of these pleasant thoughts. I will remind myself of my broader sense of purpose that inspires me. All these things are modes or methods of meditation, which for our purposes in this discussion is dialogue with oneself. It's very important. So, that'll be all for the first installment of our philosophical meditation for on daily or frequent philosophical practices. And there will definitely be a second one next week. All right. So, in order to make our practices that we're going to discuss as useful as possible, I think it makes sense to talk a little bit about the schools of philosophy and the philosophers that are going to be giving us these practices, right? Some of the practices are linked, you know, or connected directly to a philosopher. Others are coming from more of a general perspective. So, I do think a brief discussion of some of the major. The major schools that will be providing us with these practices in the next few episodes might be useful. So, today we're going to talk a little bit about Stoicism. And we're mainly going to be talking about the sort of general Stoic choice of life, right? Which is to say, to a large extent, how did the Stoics view the individual in the universe? And how should we respond as individuals, according to the Stoics, to deal with that circumstance, right? So, for the Stoics, you have to keep a couple things in mind immediately, right? One, fate exists. Which is to say, there are things that are outside of our control. And we are forced to deal with these things. We are forced to grapple with these things. And we also, for the Stoics, in order to lead as stress-free a life as possible, which was really important for them, we have to be able to make that distinction effectively. Which is to say, that which we can control and that which we cannot control. Between those two things. So, to use Pierre Hadeau's philosophy as a way of life for a moment here. Here are the things that do not depend on us. Okay? The course of nature and the actions of other people. The necessary linkage of cause and effect, which is to say, fate. Thus, a number of the things that we think of. From life, from strength, from status, to career, to pleasure, and suffering, and sickness, and health, and death, right? These are things that do not depend on us. Now, this is a very important distinction to make. What we can control, which is to say, what does depend on us, is only one thing. Okay? Which cannot be torn away from us, according to Hadeau and the Stoics. This is the will to do good and to act in conformity with reason. Now, the will to do good speaks to one of, you know, the key elements of Stoicism, which I think is almost inherently therapeutic for those of us who might be really intense, right? We do not control results. We only control our intentions. And we need to cultivate our intentions. We need to ask ourselves, through that cultivation, if our intentions are good, if they are true, if they are true. If they are just. That is reason acting upon our own thinking, right? Reason is like a weapon for the Stoic, right? Reason is what allows us to control our emotions, for example. Reason is what allows us to exist in a world where tragedy occurs. Exercises of reason allow us to see that we can be resilient in the face of these things. It allows us to, once again, see and make that acknowledgement of what is and what is not in our control and learn to try to cultivate our emotions. A healthy sense of indifference to those things that we do not control, to the things that do not depend on us, right? But we need to cultivate this idea of the will to do good and to know what the good is through reason and through courage, okay? And through that, we gain a sense of independence because we're no longer allowing ourselves to basically practice the false belief that we can control what does not depend on us, right? So, we begin with that for the Stoics. Fate exists. people's wills are out of our control. And it's almost, you know, for me, the way I conceive of this is that there's a collision and that's almost how the world is made. So by that, I mean, from the Stoic perspective, there is the universe, there is fate. And for them, it is rational. The idea that cliche, everything happens for a reason, the Stoics would agree with that. Right? You have your reason, the universe is reasonable, right? Or let's say is rational is a better way of putting it. Maybe not reasonable, right? It's rational. Other people are expressing their will through actions, right? So it's almost like everything collides to make reality, right? So we have to figure out a way to relate to these things that are out of our control. Once we cultivate or we're constantly working to cultivate our good intentions, our truthful intentions, right? Within ourselves, we have to relate to these things that are outside of our control, right? And what Seneca says, which is a really cool idea from Pierre Hadeau, is the fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them. Very much, you know, again, in line with this idea of everything happens for a reason. Well, we have to then make a relationship with that happening and we have to cultivate that reason, right? To create a kind of friendliness to what has occurred. Nietzsche commented on the Stoics, you know, with this idea of amor fati, which meant to love one's fate, to not look back and yearn for things to have been different, but to somehow work to make peace with what has occurred, right? To make peace with what is occurring at this moment, because it's for the Stoics, again, it's brought into existence by things that are both a result of our actions. And we'll talk about that in a second. And as I've been saying, right, a result of this idea of fate and other people's actions. So although a great deal of what occurs is out of our control, this does not at all mean for the Stoic that we shouldn't participate in life, which is to say that we shouldn't try to turn our good intentions into actions. And that leads to the next sort of big idea for the Stoics, which is that we have to be of service. Okay, we have to devote ourselves to the common good. As Seneca said of the Stoics, right, and he was a Stoic himself, no school has more goodness and gentleness. None has more love for mankind, or is more devoted to the common good. The goal it assigns for us is to be useful, to help others, and to take care not only of ourselves, but of everyone in general, and of each person in particular. So the idea that stuff's out of our control, tragedies are out of our control, we're going to have to create ways to relate to those things. And we're going to get into that with the first exercise from this book of Stoicism that will, in their eyes, I believe, prepare us for some of these things. Because they don't want you to run from what might go wrong. They definitely don't want you to run from what will definitely happen. We'll talk about that more a little bit in the next lecture as well. But we have to present ourselves. We have to use our imaginations in the way that we're going to do it. And we have to present ourselves. We have to use our imaginations in the way that we're going to do it. And we have to present ourselves. We have to or let's say, in a mode where we're cultivating resilience and toughness, I think might even be the word, cultivating strength, right? It's a virtue for them. To focus on the harshness of reality for them is a frequent practice that, you know, similar to, let's say, how steel sharpens steel. That's what they believed in, right? And the end of that, again, is not only to care for ourselves, to prepare ourselves, but it's also such that we could be of service to others. If you're acting and living and thinking and feeling as if all of your family members will live forever and you never confront the difficult truth that we're all mortal, you may not be able to be by your loved one's side when they need you in a time of sickness because you're too overcome with grief. You may have to leave the room or you may not be able to intelligibly convey information to them. You may not be able to listen to the doctor and be as helpful as you can be because you've done zero preparation for this. This moment of suffering is what the Stoics might say, right? So although the results of our actions are not what we should count heavily, because that's always uncertain, right? Again, we want to focus on our intentions. All that really meant for the Stoic was that we have to, as this quote from Seneca says, take appropriate action to be of service, to be useful in society. But the Stoic, and this was meaningful for them, and I'm sure a number of us may have heard this phrase or may say it ourselves even in a slightly different way, right? But the Stoic, always acts, quote, under reserve. They tell themselves, I want to do X if fate permits. So maybe if you're a person of faith, you might say, you know, God willing. That's a phrase I say and often hear, right? If fate does not permit it, they will try to succeed in some other way, or else they will accept fate by willing what happens, which is to say accepting it. And maybe even as, you know, we have that idea, amor fati, right? That means to, amor is to love, right? So to will it is almost to love it, right? Epictetus famously told his students, don't wish that things go a certain way, okay? Don't try to make things happen the way you want them to happen, but instead train yourself to learn how to want what happens to happen the way it happens. And then you will be happy. Because again, so much of what happens is out of our control. So amor fati is almost a relationship to what occurs, but that Stoic intentionality to do good, to be of service is also a very important part of their philosophy. So we can either fight with what we want to express our goodness, right? It's sort of, again, following what Hadot characterizes as the Stoic theory of duties, where we need to participate. We need to try to create a more just society, where we need to do these actions that will hopefully be, let's say, helped by fate, but we can't be certain about that. But it doesn't mean we don't do the good thing, right? It's almost as if we could say the Stoic would encourage you to be of service, but they don't want you to be stressed out while you're doing that. So they need you to understand amor fati. They need you to understand what is in your control, what is out of your control. They need you to make sure your intentions are, once again, good, true, and just. They need you to confront reality as objectively as possible and use your imagination such that you're prepared for things to go wrong. So you're not totally shocked on top of being hurt. So you're better able to deal with the hurt. So the indifference is, I would say, a benevolent or a good type of indifference, because for the Stoic, if we're to agree with them, it's honest. You will not be tortured by what is out of your control if you learn to be indifferent and then focus on what is, in fact, within your control. I meant to say, try to offer something to the world. Once again, you'll be less discouraged by misfortune if you were to adopt this philosophy, I think is also something that the Stoics would encourage us to think about.
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