Stoicism

Stoic sto·i·cism ˈstōəˌsizəm/ noun 1. the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint. synonyms: patience, forbearance, resignation, fortitude, endurance, acceptance, tolerance, phlegm "she accepted her sufferings with remarkable stoicism" 2. an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge, and that the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.

Adjective 1. of or relating to the school of philosophy founded by Zeno, who taught that people should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity. Stoicism Noun 2. (lowercase) conduct conforming to the precepts of the Stoics, as repression of emotion and indifference to pleasure or pain

Maybe it begins the first time your pain, be it emotional or physical, was not soothed by the one you expected to receive words and actions of comfort and consolation.

Maybe it begins the first time when you shared what overjoyed you or filled you with a sense of pride and accomplishment, was received with indifference.

Either of it, the lack of compassion for your pain or your joy demonstrated by the world around you, will inevitably lay down the first brick of a solid foundation of shutting yourself off. Cutting off the access to your own emotional availability. To others, but really, to yourself. You can't give to others what you are unable to give to yourself. You can't receive from others, what you are unable to receive from yourself.

Wait. What was that? You can't receive from others what you are unable to receive from yourself?

Aah, you didn't know it works that way, did you?

Yes, you have to be able to give and receive to yourself first before you are able to extend the same to others, to anything or anyone outside of yourself.

So you have to learn to have compassion for the pain and the joy you feel. You have to learn how to soothe or celebrate yourself. You have to learn to love yourself, no matter how many times that voice peeps up to tell you if only "fill in the blank", you would be loved. You have to learn to embrace yourself the way only you can, since there is only one of you around.

Once you accept the way you have chosen to manifest to experience life as you are, you will wake up to the gift of your own essence. The gift of being alive. Of being real. Of having the capacity to indulge in the full spectrum of complete opposites that life consists of. For what is joy without pain? What is leisure without labor. What is love without indifference.

Go on, dismantle that wall of protection you build around who you really are with the false belief that you can make it through life unscathed. Step out and show off those things that make you feel alive. Share of yourself the way you did before you fell for the untruth that no one cares. Be moved by what makes your heart sing and your soul cry out. It will draw in those spirits who understand that to be alive is the gift of feeling with every part of your being.