The First and Most Important Victory

It’s easy to look at people who are calm and self-disciplined and assume that their disposition comes naturally to them, or that it is somehow divinely inspired. These people, they simply don’t have to struggle with the temptations or the frustrations that we mere mortals struggle with—that’s why they are able to stand before us as models of equanimity and poise. Perhaps in some cases this is true, but usually it’s not. Take someone like George Washington for example. To the people who encountered him, he was a paragon of rationality and self-control. But those who really knew him understood that he, like all ambitious people, was subject to great passions and a roiling temper from his earliest days. Indeed, this was exactly what made Washington so impressive to those who actually worked with him. As the Governor Robert Morris wrote of Washington , it was with these passions that Washington waged "his first contest, and his first victory was over himself." The same was true of Cato and Marcus Aurelius . They were not naturally stoic. If they had been, their example would not be nearly so meaningful. Because then they wouldn’t have been examples at all: it would just be biology or d…