for a\u00a0Stoic lesson<\/a>. We might have felt sad for the goose, but certainly the goose felt no anxiety about death or the afterlife. Her companions seem to hardly notice she is gone. The donkey looked pitiful for some time, but really, besides the scabs and scars, he was perfectly happy. Of everyone \u201cinvolved\u201d in the events, it was ironically the humans who seemed to be traumatized the most.<\/p>\nWhen we suffer and feel emotional, it\u2019s worth remembering the line from DH Lawrence\u2019s poem,<\/p>\n
\u201cI never saw a wild thing
\nSorry for itself.
\nA small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
\nWithout ever have felt sorry for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Stoics talk a lot about grief. They know that it is real and they certainly wouldn\u2019t pretend that avoiding it completely is advisable, or even possible. But they always loved reminders that self-pity and getting overly emotional wasn\u2019t productive. That it wasn\u2019t natural either–and that we can find inspirations for strength and fortitude everywhere, even in a little bird or a donkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My wife and I live on a farm outside Austin, Texas. A few weeks ago, our favorite goose mysteriously went missing. It was almost certainly killed and eaten by some predator. A few months prior to that, our beloved pet donkey was seriously injured fighting off a mountain lion. Thankfully he survived, but it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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