Stoic strength and resilience affirmations, in the Stoics’ own words

Chapter 20 of book V of the Meditations, in Long’s 1862 translation, starts from the people who obstruct Marcus Aurelius in his proper acts; so far as they do, he counts them among the things which are indifferent (Adiaphora). They may impede his action, he writes, but not his disposition, which acts conditionally: the mind converts every hindrance into an aid, and the obstacle on the road helps on the road. The condition is what the Stoics call the Reserve clause: an act undertaken on the understanding that something may prevent it is not defeated when something does (Meditations, V, 20).

Book IV, chapter 49, supplies the image: the promontory against which the waves continually break, which stands firm and tames the fury of the water. The chapter continues with a correction of speech, not “unhappy am I because this has happened” but happy because, though it has happened, I continue free from pain, and ends on the principle that to bear a thing nobly is good fortune (Meditations, IV, 49).

Seneca’s dialogue On Providence, in Aubrey Stewart’s 1889 translation, argues that good men are tried because they are worth trying. In chapter IV he takes the body as his example: the strongest part is the one exercised most often, and fortune, by repeated blows, hardens a man against herself. Resilience here is the result of exposure, not a quality one declares (On Providence).

Letter 78 to Lucilius, written to a friend with a long illness, comes closest to an affirmation. Pain is slight, Seneca says, if opinion has added nothing to it, and a man who tells himself to keep a stout heart because it will soon cease makes it slight by thinking it slight. The sentence comes after an analysis of pain, which is either endurable or short, and before the rule that everything depends on opinion. The inner stronghold of the later Stoics rests on the same rule (Inner citadel, Letter 78).