People say they want things to be calm. They want things to be easy. They claim to want success. They hate stress.

But look at their choices? Look at your own choices. Do we really mean it?

In one of his letters, Seneca talks about people who “plunge headlong into the middle of the flood,” referring to people whose lives are filled with needless drama and conflict, busyness and chaos. Sure, a Stoic should be able to endure difficult circumstances and a “turbulent life,” but they would never choose that. No, the wise man, he says, “chooses to be at peace rather than at war.”

​Think of Elon Musk, who we’ve talked about before (and happens to follow Daily Stoic on Twitter). This is a guy with a lot going on. He’s doing a lot of important work. Yet he wakes up most mornings and, as the kids say, chooses violence. He picks fights on social media. He inserts himself into culture war issues. He makes strange decisions in his personal life. If you read Walter Issacson’s fascinating (and often horrifying) biography of Elon, you get the sense that he simply cannot be at peace and instead chooses the storm, chooses chaos and violence because it’s less scary to him than being with his own thoughts (or even enjoying his own success). Sure, he’s very rich, but the Stoics would have seen this as all rather tragic.

We don’t need to judge, we should just try to do better in our own lives. Each of us needlessly chooses violence in our own way. All of us find ways to plunge headlong into the middle of the flood—because we think we’re supposed to, because we don’t have the discipline to stay focused on what’s essential. This costs us. It costs us money and happiness, it burns us out, it burns other people out.

It’s no way to live.

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