The world
War, disease, money worries, new powers that seem to change everything: it feels like an exceptionally restless time, and that feeling is as old as the practice itself. Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations not in a study but in an army camp on the Danube frontier (book one carries the note ‘written among the Quadi, on the river Gran’), while the Antonine plague ran through the empire for fifteen years and the currency lost its value. Seneca survived banishment and three emperors; Epictetus was expelled from Rome and started again in Nicopolis. Their answer was neither looking away nor drowning in it, but sorting: what happens in the world is not yours. Your attention, your judgment and your small contribution are.
38 exercises and cases on the world, from the Stoic practice of sorting what is yours from what is not.
Cuts in this topic
Take the situation apart. Each piece goes in one box; there is no third option.
The situation
There is war in the news and you notice it seeping into your days.
Yours
- How often you open the news today.
- What you concretely give or do for those affected.
- The judgment that simply living on would be betrayal.
Not yours
- How the war goes and when it ends.
- The jolt at every new report.
- What others think of you simply living on.
The situation
A new technology can suddenly do much of what you do for a living.
Yours
- What you learn with it, and how you shift your work.
- The verdict that your craft is therefore worthless.
Not yours
- That it exists, and how quickly it improves.
The situation
The climate news makes you gloomy about the future.
Yours
- Your own use, and your voice where you have one.
- Promoting the despair to the conclusion that nothing matters.
Not yours
- How the climate develops over the coming decades.
The situation
With the big news you no longer know whom to believe.
Yours
- Whom you give your attention to.You do not read “the news”; you read sources, and you choose them. Two or three careful addresses beat a hundred accidental ones. This is the diet nobody else governs: what you let in, you decide at the door.
- Your assent: what you believe and what you pass on.Assent is a signature, and passing on makes you a source. Both can wait until you know more, and that waiting is not weakness but the core of the practice. Whoever signs slowly rarely has to take anything back.
- The conclusion that truth therefore no longer exists.Cynicism feels like seeing through it all, but it is a judgment, not a discovery, and the most expensive one there is: whoever decides that everything is a lie gives away the only instrument left for weighing anything. Being tired of the noise is allowed. Throwing away the scales is not.
Not yours
- What actually happened.The facts lie somewhere, but not in your room; what reaches you are reports of reports. That you cannot touch reality directly is not a new defect of this age, it is the human condition, only with more relay stations.
- That confident voices sound louder than careful ones.Doubt does not sell and nuance travels slowly; the noise rewards whoever sounds most certain. That is the design of the stage, not your fault and not your project. You do not have to fix the noise in order not to fall for it.
- What others believe and share.Around you people sign and forward at a pace that sometimes drives you to despair. Their signature falls outside your reach, and correcting at every birthday party is a day job without wages. One calm question is the most that makes sense: how do you know that?
The reasoning. The truth is not lost; it is surrounded. Your attention, your assent and your forward button are the three gates, and all three are yours.
The situation
The news warns of a new disease and you feel the old unease returning.
Yours
- Your ordinary precautions, and otherwise your ordinary day.Hands, common sense, and following the advice when it comes: your part is small, familiar and quickly done. After that the work is not keeping watch but living: the appointment, the child, the walk. Being prepared is something other than already being ill.
Not yours
- Whether the threat comes, and how big it becomes.That is decided by transmission routes, measures and chance, and measured by people whose profession it is. Your vigilance does not count in it; it can only shrink your days in advance.
- The old unease that is instantly back.The body has a memory, and it fires at the first report, faster than your thinking can join. That is not a relapse and not a weakness; it is a scar that responds to the weather. Scars do that, and it says nothing about what happens next.
The reasoning. The threat and the unease report by themselves; only the precautions and the ordinary day need you to begin.
The situation
Everything seems to change faster than you can keep up with.
Yours
- What you choose to keep up with.Nobody keeps up with everything, the experts merely choose more sharply what to let go. Choosing here is not a lag but craftsmanship: following two things well beats following twenty things halfway. The choice is entirely yours, and it may be small.
Not yours
- The pace of the world.The acceleration is driven by millions at once and consults nobody individually. There will be no moment when the world pauses until everyone has caught up; that moment has never existed.
- The feeling of falling behind.That feeling fires at every novelty that passes, and it measures the width of the stream, not your worth. It happens to everyone who looks honestly, including the people you consider ahead. Let it fire and settle again; it is a measurement of the river, not of the swimmer.
The reasoning. The stream accelerates without consulting you; your stride stays the same size. Choose where to place it.
Propositions in this topic
True or false? The answer is given; the reasoning behind it comes with the exercise.
- TrueWhether a war breaks out somewhere this year falls outside your box.
- FalseWhoever does not follow the news every hour is a worse citizen.
- FalseYour helplessness about a world problem proves there is nothing you can do.
- FalseThe world is more troubled than it has ever been.
- FalseWorrying about the climate is the same as contributing to it.
- TrueA new technology that can take over your work says something about the times, not about your worth.
- TrueAs a human being you are a citizen of your own country and of the world.
- FalseUncertainty about the economy is a sign you are doing something wrong.
Situations in this topic
Each situation below is already sorted: yours, not yours, or both. That sorting is the exercise.
- Not yoursThere is war in the news and the images stay with you all day.
- YoursYou consider changing your habits for the climate, but think: what difference does my bit make.
- Not yoursPrices are rising and you do not know where it ends.
- Not yoursThe election turns out differently from what you hoped.
- Not yoursAt the table somebody has a fierce opinion about the news and is looking for an opponent.
- YoursYour child asks whether there will be a war.
- YoursYou want to do something for people who had to flee, but do not know what.
- Not yoursThe markets drop and your pension pot drops with them.