210208 What I want learned in my studies this morning

Today's Tao:

Practice non-action. 

Work without doing. 

Taste the tasteless. 

Magnify the small, increase the few. 

Reward bitterness with care. 

See simplicity in the complicated. 

Achieve greatness in small things. 

The wise do not attempt anything very big, 

And thus achieve greatness. 

Because the wise always confront difficulties, 

They never experience them.

From The Daily Stoic: 

“You cry, I’m suffering severe pain! Are you then relieved from feeling it, if you bear it in an unmanly way?”—Seneca, Moral Letters, 78.17

This is the sort of thing critics of stoicism (small s) deride. "You suppress your feelings too much!" 

Reread the quote. It's not about suppressing feelings. It's an choosing reactions. 

Is my caterwaulling accomplishing anything? Is it achieving my goal? No? Then stop it and find a better way. Do something productive instead. 

Here's the nut: this applies to emotions just as much as it does to physical pain. 

It's hard to calm myself during great stress. Finding my center, a foundation I can build from, a steady base and from which I can work, is essential to being effective. 

From Eric Hoffer, Part III, Unifying Agents:

Action 

If you want to get ahead, being part of the group is useful. It makes sense to know the lingo of your cohort and your target audience. This makes your communication easier and your actions more effective. 

Fitting in helps, regardless of how many shoe commercials tell you different. 

Action is a unifier.... An active people thus tends toward uniformity. It is doubtful whether without the vast action involved in the conquest of a continent, our nation of immigrants could have attained its amazing homogeneity in so short a time. Those who came to this country to act (to make money) were more quickly and thoroughly Americanized than those who came to realize some lofty ideal. The former felt an immediate kinship with the millions absorbed in the same pursuit. It was as if they were joining a brotherhood. They recognized early that in order to succeed they had to blend with their fellow men, do as others do, learn the lingo and play the game.... On the other hand, those who came to this country to realize an ideal (of freedom, justice, equality) measured the realities of the new land against their ideal and found them wanting. They felt superior, and inevitably insulated themselves against the new environment.

(The True Believer, XIV-96)