RE: Thinking Like a Stoic: Reprogramming Your Mind
Funny coincidence to have this pop up just a few weeks after I started reading MA's meditations myself. Made a lot of the same reflections as you @threebagsfull. While I think the sternness you mentioned is essential to understanding Stoicism, I think one should be careful about applying it to your own life just based on face value. The reason is I find MA/Soticism so appealing is that it utterly refuses a world of excuses. You're your own man making your own way through life's hardships. If you committ 100% and never cower over the task, you absolve yourself both in your own eyes and the eyes of the Gods. That's the short and sweet version.
However I have previously applied the same sternness to my own life and ended up being burnt out, worn down and when you take the time for recouperation added to what I actually did when I refused any "weakness", the total out-put isn't all that great. My best friend applied the same sternness to his own life, harsher, longer and less forgiving than me. He worked himself so hard he had an heart attack and died at fucking 28. He wanted to conquer the world, but he cannot any more... The doctors said was an issue wit his heart, and could have happened any time. Might have been years ago, might have been years a head. I knew him tho, and I saw how he over years got more and more tired, worked himself to the bone and not allowing time for pause and recuperation. So with this I read MA way differently now when I would have six-seven years ago. What I take from it now is that you should live every day so you can reflect back on it and say you're happy with the work you put in it. Things aren't changed over night, it's done a little bit every day. So as long as you keep your long term goals in mind and that life isn't a constant - it actually goes up and down - you will end up ahead when you both fight yourself AND listen to yourself.
Your will to fight is all and well, but if you refuse your own wisdom in doing so, you will not win in the long run. At least thats the way I see things :)
Oh most definitely. You must have balance in life and MA seemed to understand this. You can totally view stoicism as a great philosophy for being a hard worker but it is much more than that. I think the helenic philosophers enjoyed their leisure time and loved deeply. Too often we see the sternness of the philosophy but not the depth. I too saw it much differently at the beginning but now i see the softness of it too. You have to honor your wisdom