Stoicism
What is Prohairesis?
The Stoic Understanding of Choice, Control and Freedom
Throughout your time you’ll come across people who are ungrateful, people who lack basic manners, people who don’t seem able to say simple words like “please” or “thank you”, people who won’t return a smile.
There’s worse. There’s people who are outright meddling and treacherous, people who’d take the clothes off your back. They’ll see you as prey.
In short, some will chill you with indifference, some will obstruct and frustrate, while others are outright dangerous to you.
But deep down, you know something for sure. In every person you see a resemblance of yourself.
Whether they are an irritant, an obstruction or pose a danger, it doesn’t matter. They are like you, they are human.
Our higher selves mete out no punishment, no blame, no score keeping and neither damnation nor grudging bitterness. Your higher self cannot indulge in any of these because it would be inflicting these things on itself.
What is this “higher self”? We are free to choose how we respond to what happens to us. Once we truly understand that, we begin to grasp our uniquely human condition of being both a material thing like any other thing, and an…
