Realize this, and you will find strength.”
He’s talking about framing, of course. Not the contents of thoughtstream (which are beyond our control, though we feign ownership), but the direction of thoughtstream (which is entirely up to our whim, though we imagine it's compelled by worldly doings*).
* "Worldly doings"?
Consider the statement “She made me angry!”
No, she didn’t. You chose to make yourself angry by deliberately framing her remark as maddening.
I recognize that this is a phenomenally unfashionable proposal to offer at this moment, when everyone is owed everything by everyone and a heartless world savagely oppresses our poor noble emotions with its disobedience, making unbridled pique both inevitable and necessary. But, hey, it's Marc's birthday, so let's honor the guy by pretending we've absorbed his point a little, after twenty centuries.
So must I set my jaw, stiffen my spine, and stoically endure when the world cruelly fails to suit my bill? Well, that's one option. The other is to recognize that you're riding, not driving, and to simply (sorry, fellow Americans, this should come with a trigger warning) go with it. If you've framed yourself afflicted by umpteen weighty grievances, remember you are free to blithely drop the entire burden at any moment, and the whole train keeps speeding forward, regardless. Atlas, poor shmuck, could have let go at any time. It'd have been fine.
The so-called suicidal urge is really a burden-dropping urge. The option of simply letting go remains eternally available, and that experience is unimaginably lovely. Why would you harm your body? What did your body ever do to you?
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