260818 What I learned in my studies this morning 6

Today's Meditation:

The Pocket Stoic by John Sellars, 3: The Problem with Emotions

I can maintain my equanimity by maintaining my pause, my 'space between stimulus and response.' I need to teach myself, or rather train myself, to act not react, just as we can learn to mitigate our startle response. 

Take a soldier. They live their lives around guns and explosions. Do they jump and shiver every time one goes off? Not if they've been trained properly.

Repeated exposure to the sounds, from practice on the firing range to hearing artillery and fighter planes race around the sky, they learn to stop panicking every time something sudden and loud happens near them.*

So do the same for what penchants I have for impulsive anger, jealousy, envy, panic, offense, embarrassment, and outrage.

Practice my premeditatio malorum. Imagine in great detail, with as much versimillitude as I can, situations in which I am slighted or insulted, jostled or struck, embarrassed or humiliated. Understand what prompts me to judge that I am harmed by these things.

Is my virtue at stake? Am I inclined to viciousness because of it?

Then am I harmed?

In practicing so, I inoculate myself against them, making them lesser provocations, if any at all.

Will I be fully successful? No. But I can become nearer sagacity with every iteration.

Much as I've taught myself through the years to think of the person first, I can teach myself to think of restraint and equanimity first when those negative impulses impinge upon me.

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* Are they incapable of being surprised or startled? No. But they are trained to respond less often, less emphatically. And, in general, it works well for most people. Exceptions prove the rule.