Notes from Stoic Week 2015

As mentioned in my last post, next week is the annual International Stoic Week. I signed up, will be participating, and encourage you to do the same. (It’s free.) I participated in 2015 and pulled my notes to review (above). I thought I’d share a highlight for you.

Drawn from Stoic writers like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, Stoic Week 2015 presented ten Stoic principles. I find them helpful and inspiring. Here they are:

1. Stay active
2. Do not fear
3. Live modestly
4. Be grateful
5. Keep above the herd
6. Follow nature
7. Value time
8. Behold virtue
9. Block vices
10. Examine yourself

It is obvious why, after more than two millennium, these principles have survived. They are ageless. They point to the/a course of a proper life. Lists, however, are easy and can easily be forgotten. I suggest taking one of these points and living with it for a day, or a week. Take it and meditate on it, carry it around with you. What does it really mean to “Follow nature,” for instance. One can follow one’s own nature, follow the natural world, reject the not-natural. However you choose to consider it, such advice takes one deep and leads to insight. Insight can never be taken from you. Living with such advice for a focused extended period is a means by which to take it off the page and put it in the heart.

Thanks for reading.