Ward Farnsworth

It suggests that the Stoic tries to respond to events in a manner similar to what would be expected of anyone after long experience with them—the kind of response you might have after encountering the occasion for it a thousand times. The result is not an uncaring or unfeeling attitude, though it will probably not involve much emotion. It is the posture of a veteran.

If Stoics are distinguished by one policy as an everyday matter, it is a refusal to worry about things beyond their control or to otherwise get worked up about them.

The trouble with fear, first, is that it multiplies our problems. If something will be bad when it arrives later, we increase its effects when we pull them into the present by fearing them. Why suffer twice?

To put the point differently, the Stoics, when speaking in the manner shown here, will sometimes be found to arrive at the same summit as the followers of other philosophical or spiritual traditions, but they go up the mountain by a different face. Their way will be congenial to many modern readers. It is the path of logic, reflection, and knowledge of humanity.