Preferred indifference

To opinions, to desires, to outcomes

Learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.

Marcus Aurelius

If you derive joy from being told you’re great, you’ll derive sorrow when told you’re a piece of shit. I want someone to think I’m great, but it’s a preferred indifference. I’m great? Okay. I’m a piece of shit? Okay. Either way, I will not let someone have the power to make me feel good or bad because you can’t have control over one without control over the other.

The list goes on. Think about your desires and the indifference they’ll make in your life. No longer let these desires have power over you because anything outside your sphere of influence isn’t truly yours and can always be taken away from you. Look at your passions through a new lens, one of preferred indifference. You are more powerful this way. Power isn’t in obtaining but in the ability to be content with or without the obtainment, with or without the spouse, the friends, the good opinions, and the status symbols. If stripped of everything, you’d see who you are, a weak addict dependent on the external mirage or a powerful stoic dependent on the internal, the one thing that can never be taken, coerced, or damaged. That is the truth; can you face it? In The Matrix, plenty of people live in ignorance rather than face the truth of reality. So hopelessly dependent on the system, they’d do anything to protect it. I can only imagine the fight you’re putting up while reading this. I get it because I did too. There’s something instinctual about the preservation of self, but you must realize the mirage is a vulnerability, not an empowering reality.