Cato the Younger was known as the most incorruptible man of his time: he refused bribes in a politics that ran on them, and walked out in all weathers without a cloak to harden himself. When he stood for the consulship, the highest office of the republic, he lost; partly because he alone refused to buy votes. His friends were devastated; electoral defeat counted as a lifelong disgrace, and beaten candidates withdrew in mourning. Not Cato. According to Plutarch he spent the day as he always did: he took a bath, had himself rubbed with oil and played a game of ball, and the next morning he stood on the forum again, working for the republic that had just rejected him.
Losing publicly, precisely because you refused to do what winning costs. The temptation is double: becoming cynical about the game, or starting to play it after all.
The result lay with the voters and with his opponents' money: not his. His integrity and his work of tomorrow: entirely his. Cato refused to pay for the defeat with the only thing he truly owned.
Where are you playing a game whose rules you actually reject, because losing feels worse than bending? What would it cost to lose the way Cato did?
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases