What The Wise Man Needs

I was listening to this great clip about the wise man.

The author is a famous Stoic philosopher. He is talking about the wise man under the context of "what does the wise man need".

Does the wise man need friends?

Does the wise man need fancy clothes?

Does the wise man need constant love and affection from others?

Does the wise man need good food?

Does the wise man need... anything?

It's easy to say that we need certain things. We grow comfortable with a wide variety of things as we go through life.

We grow accustomed to living a certain way. When something disrupts that, we get angry.

That's why you see so many people who constantly complain about things they've "lost"... money problems... material desires, etc....

People love to talk about the things they want to get.

What does the wise man talk about?

The wise man/woman only needs himself and his or her bare bones necessities covered.

Basic food. Basic shelter. What else could the wise man need?

Netflix?

The wise man does not need Netflix. Though his desire to watch it is not wrong.

If you were to rip Netflix out of the hands of the wise man, he would simply find something else to entertain himself. If you rip everything away from the wise man, his mind shall keep him entertained.

He will not grieve over the loss of these things, for he truly does not need them. That does not mean that the wise man may never have or use these things, but rather, that he will use them with gratitude and the thought that one day they will likely be stripped away and it will not matter to him when that day comes.