Many people will say that the key teaching behind Stoicism is to be emotionless, unmoved, or cold towards others.
That’s not true. Let’s examine why.
In reality Stoicism teaches us to examine our responses to events in our lives in relation to what happened to us externally (i.e., events beyond our control) and what we choose to perceive about those events internally (i.e., our analysis of what happened).
Unfortunately, the way many have written about Stoicism may cause some confusion, since they have consistently told us not to let any negative feelings, such as anger, hatred, fear, etc., dictate our actions or reactions toward ourselves and others. This may lead a reader to think that the Stoic view is to suppress all emotions, appear unemotional, and ignore everything around us as if nothing mattered at all. This is not the true tenet of Stoicism. Suppression means denying an emotion that is already present. Stoic practice begins earlier, it asks us to inspect the judgment that is turning an initial impression into an overwhelming emotion.
