Surrender But Don’t Give Yourself Away

The fact of life is that we’re going to get tossed around by forces outside our control. Never forget fortunes’ habit of behaving exactly as she pleases, Seneca reminds us, never forget that adversity is inevitability. There would be war, he said, and torture and shipwrecks and exile, along with a lot less dramatic stuff: traffic jams, divorces, food poisoning, annoying neighbors, bad weather, pets that run away.

The only option according to the Stoics was to submit. No amount of wishing otherwise, no amount of anxiety, no amount of power or wealth would fully protect us from this. We had to surrender to the fates, let them guide us. But perhaps we could add to this idea a little corollary from Cheap Trick—surrender, but don’t give yourself away.

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