Aga Aquino

A Wise man is content with himself and thus therefore need no friends

Epicurus to Stilbo

So I celebrated my birthday recently and came to find that my way of ignoring greetings on social media has really filtered the truest of connections I have considering where I am in life.

Because it was one things I learned as I started studying Stoicism that it matters more what we do rather than what we say. I have been disappointed by broken promises and hurt by dishonesty that my judgment of a person’s value lies on what they do for me, and thusly my way of presenting my most authentic self is through what I do for them.

It is simply the impetus of my learning, and the main idea behind this blog.

Marcus Aurelius said: “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” and “The best revenge is to be unlike the one who did you wrong”.

So I try to set my self to this standard, though there were and I am sure will be many occasions to which I will fail. But this reflection is sparked by looking back to the past few days, and on the last moments of Seneca.

Seneca must have been alone when he took his life but the moments before then he was surrounded by his most loyal of friends and abandoned by those who only valued him as much as he could be of use to them. And I have met both types in my life, but I have learned not to be hurt by abandonment, because of how Seneca thought about it. Comparing a mutilated man to one who has no friends.

A man who loses a leg or an eye through injury or sickness will move on in life, to make the best life with whatever limbs or organs he has left. For there is no point in grieving over that which has been lost and cannot be recovered. And so too are friends, for surely one would prefer to have one, such in the case of limbs and organs, but this loss is no reason to not continue living life as much as one possibly can.

And I really thought about this idea, on how we are social creatures and of course we need companionship, but we make the best of what we have and when in the end we have nothing, life goes on.

So after the past few days, as I made it impossible to reach me, because I see social media as a terrible medium to connect as it only brings out the worst in people, I value the few who needs no reminders of my being.