On Loss

Yeah, it's an inevitable part of life.

is loss, right? And you have loss of multiple different things.

You could lose a job, you could lose, I don't know, your investments, you could lose your house.

Those are all important, you know, basically stuff that we need to live.

But the biggest loss, of course, is people, right? Because ultimately, at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is the things you love, right? Which could also include things that aren't people.

And I don't underscore that at all.

Your feelings are your feelings.

And certainly when it comes to the family dogs in the Mulroy house, they're family.

But loss is, I think, specifically hard when it comes to death.

Everything else is recoverable, really, you know, even catastrophic things.

And it's easy to say somebody hasn't lost a house on a hurricane or something like that.

But it's incredibly difficult.

But material things are just that, right?

Yeah.

And I think the Stoics do end up setting a bit of a line in the sand on that, right? For sure.

So, I mean, you know, Epictetus loses his fancy lamp and then says, I should just have a regular lamp, right? But at the same time, though, I don't think, I think I agree with you.

I don't think the Stoics would just wipe that away if it was something so catastrophic, right?

I mean, it's important, you know, you have to have things to, you know, you have to make a living and support yourself or somebody else does.

So I think it's one of the reasons why stoicism actually came about, right? I mean, Sina started as a cynic and the cynics essentially walked around expecting everybody else to pay, to feed them, right? I mean, that's...

That's not, that doesn't work either.

Yeah, it's an inevitable part of life.

is loss, right? And you have loss of multiple different things.

You could lose a job, you could lose, I don't know, your investments, you could lose your house.

Those are all important, you know, basically stuff that we need to live.

But the biggest loss, of course, is people, right? Because ultimately, at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is the things you love, right? Which could also include things that aren't people.

And I don't underscore that at all.

Your feelings are your feelings.

And certainly when it comes to the family dogs in the Mulroy house, they're family.

But loss is, I think, specifically hard when it comes to death.

Everything else is recoverable, really, you know, even catastrophic things.

And it's easy to say somebody hasn't lost a house on a hurricane or something like that.

But it's incredibly difficult.

But material things are just that, right?

Yeah.

And I think the Stoics do end up setting a bit of a line in the sand on that, right? For sure.

So, I mean, you know, Epictetus loses his fancy lamp and then says, I should just have a regular lamp, right? But at the same time, though, I don't think, I think I agree with you.

I don't think the Stoics would just wipe that away if it was something so catastrophic, right?

I mean, it's important, you know, you have to have things to, you know, you have to make a living and support yourself or somebody else does.

So I think it's one of the reasons why stoicism actually came about, right? I mean, Sina started as a cynic and the cynics essentially walked around expecting everybody else to pay, to feed them, right? I mean, that's...

That's not, that doesn't work either.