When Your Passion Is Master of Your Reason… | We Are a Product of Our Habits

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. When passion is the master of your reason, they lied to you, they cheated you, they hurt you, they hurt someone, they hurt someone you love. Of course you're hurt, of course you're angry, of course it's consuming your attention. Beware. In fact, we all need to beware, because as the Stoics say, this is where trouble comes from, the passions.

In Euripides' Medea, we have a copy at the painted porch, it's a lovely play that I think everyone should read, he has Medea on the verge of philosopide, surprisingly aware of the temporary insanity her anger has created. I am well aware of how terrible a crime I am about to commit, she says, but my passion is master of my reason, passion that causes the greatest suffering in the world. To the Stoics, passions were diametrically opposed to reason, and the two were battling for supremacy in each of us. When passion wins we are in trouble, causes suffering for us and for others.

We we say things we regret, we jump into things we wouldn't, we make complicated things worse. We do things that can't be undone. This is why Athenodorus famously told the Emperor Augustus to count the letters of the alphabet before he did anything out of anger. He was telling him to pause and reflect, as our challenge coin says, pause and reflect. Think about it.

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