Stoic Coffee Break

“Man is affected, not by events, but by the view he takes of them.”— EpictetusHuman beings are creatures that love good stories. Stories are the things that we use to make sense of the things in the world.Myths, such as the Greek and Roman or even Norse gods were used to explain why things happen in the world.Human beings like to give meaning to the things in their lives.It’s part of what makes us human. We give meaning to the expressions on other peoples faces. We give meanings to the words they speak.We attribute feelings and thoughts to animals even when we have no real idea of what their thoughts really are.One of the core tenets of Stoicism, is the understanding that events and circumstances are simply neutral. They have no meaning other than what we give to them.Things happen in life without any reason, which is hard because we as humans want to give meanings to events. We crave a reason. We crave a why. We want to believe that the hard things we go through have some greater purpose. Otherwise we feel t