Voluntary Discomfort, Premeditation, and the Embrace of Fate#

“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’ It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress.” — Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 18.5–6 (Richard Mott Gummere)

A discipline that has only known comfort is a discipline that will break at the first frost. Phase III introduces voluntary discomfort — the Stoic practice of rehearsing hardship by choice, so that when hardship arrives unchosen, you have already met it. You will also practice premeditatio malorum (the deliberate rehearsal of what could go wrong) and memento mori (the deliberate remembrance of death). The point is not to suffer. The point is to discover that you can.