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Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on – it isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance – unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.

~ Marcus Aurelius ~

Hi everyone! It’s me, CAT! What I love about this gem I just stumbled upon today between the late and beloved Steve Irwin’s son and his, err, “hostile” friend, Emily the curlew, is the epic level of Stoicism he displays in dealing with this cute and feathered ‘lil grumpmeister:

✔️ Justice

✔️ Wisdom

✔️ Courage

✔️ Moderation

This hilarious video snipet may be less than three minutes long, but, yes, the four virtues are ALL present here. Can you see them? And look what ended up happening at the end? He rode out her storm like the BOSS he was raised to be, and it was his VIRTUE for the win!

So, with that, I don’t know about any of you, but imma keep striving to be more like ROBERT and less like ME during those moments when in my not so stoic weakness I get into a scuffle with an EMILY only to be reduced to my UNCIVIL animal instinct to drop kick a bitch into the next room.

Stoicism.

It’s what’s for breakfast … and also what I had for lunch … and I LOVE IT! Thank you, young Mr. Irwin for letting me borrow this most powerful learning moment to share with my people. I don’t know if you’re a practicing stoic, but nevertheless, your daddy must surely be proud of the wise MAN you have become!

Anger has the ability to destroy the foundation of who we are, hijacking our emotions and our capacity for reason and, as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus teaches us, drags us down to the level of a wild beast, petty and malignant.

To the Stoics, anger is an emotion that erodes the fabric of who we are, causing us to behave in ways that do not align with our values, morals and beliefs, and in doing so pushes us away from the person we want to be and the life we want to lead. Often this push is towards unethical, destructive and unvirtuous behaviour.

These thinkers from ancient Greece believed the path to happiness and a good life is found through a life of virtue, reason, and behaviour that is deliberate and in alignment with our morality. Negative emotion, of which anger is one, not only prevents this but acts in contrast to it.

When faced with hardship, adversity or the behaviour of others, the Stoics argued that these events should not be permitted to control our emotions and our thoughts. Instead we should practice self-control, detachment and focus on what we can do to improve the situation, whether that be remove ourselves from the source of pain, or work towards rising above it or passing though it with our peace of mind still in tact.

In general the ancient Stoics saw anger as an irrational and destructive emotion, one that has the ability to destroy a life in seconds, and one that pulls us away from living the lives we want through its ability to ambush and control our emotions and actions. As an antidote they prescribe the practices of self control, rational thinking, perspective and the reminder that we only really have control over our thoughts and our actions, and these two things should never be handed over.

(OrionPhilosphy.com)