Fighting the Voices That Lead Us Astray — Letters from a Stoic

He arrived at his villa late, exhausted, and found nothing prepared. Letter 123 opens with that small domestic scene, no cook, no bread, a tired man at his writing-table, and turns it into a meditation. Nothing is heavy if you accept it with a light heart.

Nothing need provoke anger if you refuse to add to your troubles by getting angry. The bread that finally arrives will be good, because hunger will make it so. The main subject of the letter is the seduction of outside voices, the men and opinions that press in on a person and try to redirect him from what he knows is right.

His instruction: decide what kind of man you want to be, and then hold that decision against every argument that pushes you elsewhere. Philosophy should not try to explain away vice, as a doctor who tells a sick man to live recklessly condemns him.

The letter collects a series of maxims, poverty is an evil to no man unless he kicks against the goads; death is not an evil; superstition is the misguided idea of a lunatic, and asks that they be learned by heart. Not memorised as performance, but absorbed until they become your first response.