Making A Difference IS Up To You

Look, there’s no way around it: Part of Stoicism is accepting that a lot of what happens in the world is outside our control . Some people have taken this to mean that the Stoics were resigned to their fate—that they were willing to tolerate the status quo and despair of the idea of improving the world or society. Of course this is rather silly when one considers that Marcus Aurelius and Cato and Seneca were all active in political life. Or that a millennium and a half later, the Stoics would directly inspire George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to take action in the founding of a new nation. In accepting what is outside of their control, a true Stoic makes a deal with themselves, and to all those with whom they are connected, to redouble their efforts to influence those things they can change. Earlier this year, Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS shoes and, as it happens, a longtime student of the Stoics ( particularly Marcus Aurelius ), got a call from his wife after yet another tragic mass shooting. As he described it to us in our interview : My wife called me very emotional and was afraid of taking our son to school. She kept reciting all the recent shootings on…