Tomorrow I’ll be running a 50 km race on Australia’s highest peak, Mt Kosciuszko (which is admittedly not very high).
Today I wake up with a cold.
Stoicism teaches us that we need only concern ourselves with the things we control. How we think and feel, how we act and what we say. Or as put more eloquently by, Epictetus.
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”
So my uncontrollable external is a cold, and my choice is what to do about it.
People often mistakenly attribute to Stoicism the mantra of ‘carry on regardless’. That it prescribes soldering on unflinchingly through adversity regardless of the consequences. The reality is that Stoicism advocates for reasoned choice. That we measure the consequences of our actions and act accordingly.
Having said that, barring a massive turn for the worse, I’ve measured the consequences and will be soldiering on.