Seneca, Session 3: Cutting Each Other Slack
“Anger exempts no stage of life, and no class of people either.”
The world before and after someone makes a minor mistake.
You don’t have to meditate to become aware of how unruly your mind is, even without external stimuli. We read Seneca, Marcus, Frankl, Warner, Emerson, Burkeman, and more to help restore our power of choice. You might call our work intellectual meditation.
By reading Seneca, we become witnesses to the circuitous justifications we have for our anger, and we better understand all the damage it is doing. A lot is at stake. In Book 3 of “On Anger,” Seneca warned, “All other vices give our minds a shove; anger pitches them headlong.”
None of us are exempt from this work. Seneca wrote, “Anger exempts no stage of life, and no class of people either.” Seneca was not just writing about full-blown fury; he analyzed the harm of indulging petty grievances.
Our choice for anger is a formidable adversary and requires our ongoing work. Seneca instructed, “We should put our minds to rest—the sort of rest we gain by constantly rehearsing sound teachings, by conducting our affairs correctly, and by keeping our thoughts focused on a desire for the only honorable goal.”
Nothing stops us from learning but our choices. Seneca observed, “People who’ve never learned don’t want to learn.”
You can fool yourself into thinking you can become physically fit by exercising when you feel like it. You can fool yourself into believing you can overcome your erroneous mindsets by occasionally attending to them. Anger, Seneca cautioned, deals “destruction at the cost of its own destruction and seeking to sink those whom it can drown only if it drowns with them.”
As we work with Seneca, when external stimuli arrive, we exercise our power to make a different choice; we no longer respond mindlessly out of an unquestioned, default mindset. Reading and reflecting on great ideas brings to light what we may have been unaware of and makes space to choose again.
Be assured that the authors we read have no power to abruptly hurl us into reality. As we are ready, we study the curriculum they teach to assist us in our own efforts.
There is still time to get on board for what’s ahead at Mindset Shifts U in 2025, but for now let’s dive deeper into On Anger.