Seneca poses a funny hypothetical. If you stopped the average successful, wealthy Roman patriarch as he left his home in the morning and asked him, \u201cWhere are you going? What are you doing today?\u201d Their answer would be something like, \u201cI don\u2019t know…stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
They knew they were supposed to be doing things and saw their peerings running around doing things, so they followed suit. They just did what they felt like they were supposed to be doing. This sort of unthinking activity,\u00a0Seneca says<\/a>, is essentially a form of \u201cbusy idleness.\u201d It is of no purpose whatsoever.<\/p>\n Marcus Aurelius<\/a>\u00a0admonished himself similarly. \u201cGet used to winnowing your thoughts,\u201d he said, \u201cso that when someone asked you what you were thinking, you could answer straightforwardly.\u201d If you can\u2019t do this, it means you\u2019re just thinking for the sake of thinking, you\u2019re not being purposeful or disciplined.<\/p>\n This is a good test for us today as we run around busy and preoccupied by our thoughts. If someone asked us, \u201cWhat are you doing? What are you thinking about?\u201d would we have a good answer? If not, we\u2019ve got some cleaning and refining to do. We should know why we\u2019re busy, we should know what we\u2019re thinking about. If we don\u2019t…well, why the hell are we doing it?<\/p>\n P.S. Sign up today for\u00a0the Daily Stoic\u2019s email<\/a>\u00a0and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Explore Our Daily Stoic Store<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n
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