It was Seneca who said that anger outlasts hurt, meaning that we take something that happened to us and make it worse—by taking it personally, by lashing out, by returning wrong to wrong. Certainly, no one illustrated this more than his pupil Nero or Claudius, the emperor who exiled Seneca for some preposterously small slight.

But it’s not just that anger is worse…it’s that anger is easy. It’s easier to be angry than hurt. Being angry is active, it’s aggressive, it’s distracting. Hurt is acceptance. It’s something you sit with. It’s something you wish you didn’t feel, but you do. It’s something you wish hadn’t happened, but did.

When Marcus Aurelius said it wasn’t manly to get angry, perhaps this is what he was saying. That the childish thing is to yell about and fight about and reject the hurt that you feel. The adult thing is to try to understand it, to come to terms with it, to understand that—like all things—it will pass, and that if you’re patient and have perspective, it will help. The responsible thing is to explore the roots of an emotion, to ask why you’re feeling a particular way, why something was so triggering or painful and to try to deal with that.

Unfortunately, the popular perception of Stoicism is about the suppression of emotion. That one should simply not feel anything, just stuff it down. No, when something happens, we must understand that we have a choice. Are we going to get angry (which is easy…even if it ultimately makes things worse)? Or are we going to feel hurt (and then from that hurt, heal, grow and learn?)

Which way will you take? The easy way or the hard way?

P.S. Over on his YouTube channel, Ryan Holiday is taking viewers along on his book tour for Right Thing, Right Now, through a behind-the-scenes series. Check out the first two videos here and here. The tour and the series are ongoing, so if you want to get a unique look into the process of launching and promoting a book, head over to subscribe to his channel!

And in case you missed it: we’ve decided to extend the preorder bonuses for Right Thing, Right Now for one more week! If you order copies today, you can still get a signed page from the original manuscript, an annotated bibliography, bonus chapters, and more. We also have some signed, numbered first-editions available, but we’re running low (only 300 left!).