It is not enough, of course, to simply tune out the noise around you. One can turn off social media. One can cultivate the quiet country life, as the Stoics did on occasion. One can ignore what is inessential, pay no attention to what makes no difference.

And still there is noise.

Because the calls are coming from inside the house, so to speak. We have the voices of doubt and anxiety, of envy and ambition, of fear and frustration. We have that ceaseless, running monologue that worries about this, resents that, wonders about this, obsessed over that.

To get to ataraxia, or a place of stillness and peace, the Stoics knew that controlling for externals was not enough. We had to develop an inner calm too, an ability to recognize our own destructive thought patterns and stop them.

This is what Marcus Aurelius was really doing in Meditations: he was trying to turn down the voices inside his head. The ones that made him afraid, the ones that made him angry, the ones that annoyed him or indulged his anxieties. Just as you learn from actual meditation, the process of journaling is a way to discover that you do not have to identify with your own thoughts, you can simply observe them, let them float by without disturbing you. You can hear them without listening to them.

The path to peace is not found through escape to exotic locales or the elimination of external impositions. It’s an inner journey. It’s a battle against the voice in our heads, not the noise out in the world. And because of that, it’s well within our control.