Seeing things as they

Guest Column

BY PAETON MCCARTY

Ourcollege experience ought to be one of growth and excitement. A time dedicated to self-betterment with a degree in mind at the end with a party or two in between. Of course, this is the dream of many college students as they enter into their freshman year. Despite this audacious view, many find it difficult to obtain this reality as they find the struggles expected in the general ups and downs of a college career. This shortcoming is the offspring of several factors, which include financial and academic difficulties with mental health as an additional barrier to the successful completion of a degree. These are overarching themes that dominate general talk of daily interactions and readings.

However, there are additional factors that I would like to give my thoughts on as we progress through not only the semester but throughout our young adult lives as well. One aspect of our college experience that some falter with is the inability to express a stoic attitude and step back from the situation. Now I don’t want to give the impression that I am some sort of moral dictator or arbiter who decides how college students should live. We are after all autonomous agents with our own thoughts, beliefs and desires. My goal is to offer general advice for those willing to take time out of their daily lives to read a column.

Now I would like to introduce a philosophical group that has existed for millennia to review their wisdom and see if we can siphon something for ourselves. Stoicism traces its roots to the ancient world with Greece and Rome. Both historic areas produced some of the greatest intellectuals of the pre-contemporary era with the likes of Seneca, Epictetus, Zeno of Citium and Marcus Aurelius at the forefront. These men attempted to offer not necessarily a creed to stringently follow, but a methodology to build the human mind and stretch it into something that could tolerate great amounts of upheaval. Basically, the end goal of Stoicism is the removal of complaint from the human vocabulary and instead train the mind to see things as they are and not through emotion. Furthermore, there’s an