OPINION:
"The world around you, with its rich colours, textures, odours and sounds, is an illusion, a show put on for you by your brain. If you could perceive reality as it is, you would be shocked by its colourless, odourless, tasteless silence. Outside your brain, there is just energy and matter." - Neuroscientist Dr David Eagleman.
Last week I slumped down on the couch after a big day at a new job and groaned, "I'm shagged", to which a person in my family (who will remain nameless) responded, "You're only shagged because you haven't worked this hard before in your life.
"You're always doing 'work', but not proper hard work like this - not like I do."
I take pride in not allowing insults to affect me. I believe offence is not inflicted or imposed upon us by someone; it's a choice we make. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote, "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
He went on to ask, "How much more suffering is caused by our response to an offence than the suffering caused by the offence itself?", as well as, "Choose not to be harmed' and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed' and you haven't been."
