Anything you like or don’t like has to do with emotions. Everything you have to do to achieve what you have to achieve to become a happier person is also connected with emotions but even more with rational thinking and acting. Only with emotions you don’t get far. An emotionalist gives up when he doesn’t like a certain obstacle. A rationalist goes on to grow, or thinks about the obstacle in order to justify whether it is worth overcoming it or not.
Among other things, the emotionalist can be shaped much more by its environment than the rationalist, who shapes its environment the way he wants it to be. The rationalist controls his thoughts while the emotionalist is easily influenced by external events. The rationalist controls an action while the emotionalist can be easily persuaded to do things. The emotionalist thus suffers from loss of control.
Rationalism is indeed a tool to live a more tranquil and therefore happier life. Stoicism teaches this. But it’s not about becoming a cold figure who doesn’t seem to be emotional at all. According to stoicism, a rationally thinking person is a person who knows what he can and cannot control. One can only control one’s own thoughts and actions but not what someone else says, thinks or does.
So you can control whether you want to live here or there, whether you want this friend or that friend. But you can’t control if the new place is exactly what you want or if the friend is really the person you want.
You have no control over what happens on the outside either. You walk comfortably and suddenly you are hit by a cyclist who hasn’t seen you. Between action and reaction you can decide how you react. How do you react now that you are lying on the ground and have pain? Will it improve the situation if you yell at the cyclist and finish him off? It can even aggravate the situation because the cyclist might feel bad or even respond to it and become just as angry. Instead, the art lies in stoicism to accept the situation. You have no other choice. What happened has happened and cannot be changed retroactively.
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
— George Orwell
Today you are the person you have become through your past actions, thoughts and experiences. Tomorrow you can be another and better person who acts and experiences through your actions and thoughts today.
