In the year 59, emperor Nero had his own mother Agrippina murdered. To the Senate he sent a letter justifying the murder, and the Senate did what frightened senates do: it voted thanksgivings and congratulations to the emperor. Senator Thrasea Paetus, the best known Stoic in the Senate, did not join in. He gave no speech of protest, for it would have saved no one and endangered everyone. He stood up and walked out of the Senate in silence, in front of everybody. Tacitus recorded it as the moment everyone understood: there is one who does not bend. Thrasea paid for his stance with his life years later; his silent walk was never forgotten in Rome.
Voting along with something you despise, or resisting in a way that changes nothing and costs everything. The third way seems not to exist.
The letter, the vote and the fear of the others: not his. His own presence was. Thrasea found the narrow strip that was entirely his: he could not change the outcome, but nobody could force him to stand beside it. Sometimes leaving is the only honest word you can still speak.
In which meeting, conversation or group chat do you nod along with something you do not stand behind? And what is your version of standing up and walking out?
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases