Stoicism Eapp.docx

Stoicism A loud, annoying whistle of my tea kettle interrupted my silent morning as I try to come up with the best introduction for this piece of writing. As I resettle my herbal tea into a small cup I made for myself, I can smell it’s great vibe coming out from that hot tea kettle. I said to myself, “This could be one of the great ways to start a better morning.” I took a small sip, and heard a voice from afar calling out for my name, it was my mom, from the other room not so far from mine, asking for help with tidying up her clothes. “Come here, my dear, can you please help me sort this all out?”, she said and without hesitation, I answered, “Sure.” And then there goes my brother after I sort everything out, asking for my favor to help him pick which one he should wear appropriately for the day and I, then again, answered, “Sure.” Next thing I knew, I was beside my father helping him figure out what is the answer in that one more question from his crossword puzzle. I am just a very normal person who is always willing of helping people sort their problems out. I’ve already been living that way ever since I laid my eyes on what life actually brings. I have been deeply devoted with helping out people no matter how frequent they ask for my help. Even with my friends, I am delighted over the thought of not feeling some kind of exhaustion whenever they ask a lot from me. Well, what I’m trying to say is I don’t intend to write this essay to brag about something, I do not consider this aspect as something to be bragged about. My parents never taught me about this, about all this act of assistance. Over the past years that I’ve been expressing myself in different ways, I’ve never had imprinted a single concept of this trait, nor heard of it all my life. It just comes out of there, somewhere out there, and I just always intend to act it out to people, just like when someone asks for my help, it’s just like I was there, not hesitating at all, saying the magic word, “Sure.”, without having the thought of how much of a work it might take me when I accept that favor and as I finish that task, I even smile at the thought that I have accomplished something for someone, it’s like I can also somehow consider this a selfless trait. But all these statements was before, until one day, I lost track of everything. I felt exhausted. I felt pain. I suddenly had ‘what ifs’ going on inside my mind. What if vice-versa? What if it’s my turn now? It’s now my turn that I should also earn help from others? What’s it like to

be helped? What does it feel like? I had all that curiousity in me, that time. I can feel my nerves coming up, it felt cruel. I felt anger. It felt like this scenario where 2 opponents made an agreement of no weapons every fight but then that one against suddenly took out a long sword enough to kill the other with just one movement. Influenced from the teachings of Socrates, Stoicism means the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint. Being stoic, as technically-viewed, became my principle ever since I was a small child and it is also basically same stuff with patience. It was like this long time unfair principle, in the end, dispelled by that time that I lost track of everything. I firmly believe that patience is one of the important and greatest traits an individual can foster. Patience is earned and for someone who’s been very abusive of someone’s patience, we shouldn’t take it for granted. We should always play fair in every game we get ourselves into to get a fair result that can be very beneficial for both sides. Not in every game we should consider only one winner, sometimes It can be both if we try to engrave a great nondiscriminatory concept within ourselves. We can always consider give-and-take process to everyone who needs it.

RODRIGO, Margarita Louise C. 11- St. Andrew