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Progress is real. But let's not confuse "nearly there" with "done."
I do not put the sage in a separate class from the rest of humankind, and neither do I eliminate pain and grief from him as if he were some sort of rock, not susceptible to any feeling.
The Stoics held that Virtue is binary. We either have it or we don't. There's no such thing as being "a little bit just" any more than a puzzle with one missing piece is complete.
This sounds harsh at first. If we've been practising for years, shouldn't we get some credit?
Well, yes and no. A puzzle with one piece missing is closer to completion than one with fifty pieces missing. That's obviously true. But it's still not finished. The Stoics would say we can (and should) recognise our progress without pretending we've arrived.
This is actually quite freeing if we sit with it. It means we don't have to perform wisdom. We don't have to pretend we've cracked the code. We're prokoptôntes (people making progress) and that's a perfectly dignified thing to be.
The path doesn't require perfection. It requires honesty about where we are.
Today's suggestion: Consider one area where we might be confusing "better than I used to be" with "good enough to stop trying." There's probably one. There usually is.
Stay hungry. Stay wise. Eat brekkie.
