Fear

Many are harmed by fear itself, and many may have come to their fate while dreading fate.
—Seneca, Oedipus,992

Harm

Choose not to be harmed‚and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed‚and you haven't been."Marcus Aurelius

Planet of the Apes

After reading Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? I'm convinced that we are living on the planet of the apes. Despite our culture and technology, our basic ape behavior isn't far below the surface in politics, and social and family life. 

Consider this scene from The Square  where a performance "artist" acts like a gorilla. Initially, human culture restrains a group of sophisticated party goer while the artist intimidates them by mimicking stereotypical gorilla behavior. The party goers are restrained by cultural expectations until the artist/gorilla mimic grabs a woman and appears to attempt to rape her. At that point an alpha male human pulls the artist off of her and begins to beat the artist. He is joined by other males and the scene ends. If the point was to illustrate human ape-like behavior, it works.

Control

The trichotomy of control: According to the Stoics, we should perform a kind of triage in which we distinguish between things we have no control over, things we have complete control over, and things we have some but not complete control over; and having made this distinction, we should focus our attention on the last two categories. In particular, we waste our time and cause ourselves needless anxiety if we concern ourselves with things over which we have no control. 
- A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine

Past

No matter how hard you try, the past can't be changed,

Go Easy

We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.
-Seneca

Focus

Every hour focus your mind attentively…on the performance of the task in hand, with dignity, human sympathy, benevolence and freedom, and leave aside all other thoughts. You will achieve this, if you perform each action as if it were your last…
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations