Stoicism is about preparation and practice. You don’t become a stoic overnight, and you can’t treat it as a binary condition. It is designed to steel you against the uncertainty of the future, because through training and time and discipline, you can become unshakable and imperturbable.

That’s what you’re doing when you read stoic texts and digest them: sharpening your weapons of reason. You’re strengthening the part of you that stands ready to meet anything that comes your way with calm and clarity.

It’s easy to say, “I won’t let the future disturb me,” as Marcus has advised us to do. It’s easy to say, “I will meet it with my weapons of reason.” But of course, it’s much harder to do. It’s harder still when we let those weapons rust and our muscles atrophy.

We’ve got to work at it. We have to prepare. We have to do our training. One page, one email, one article at a time.