A Guide to the Good Lifeby Parker on TwosThe Stoics taught that people should enjoy the good things life has to offer, including friendship and wealth, but only if they did not cling to these good things. We should periodically interrupt our enjoyment of what life has to offer to spend time contemplating the loss of whatever it is we are enjoying”Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes””The gods had given to men the means of living easily, but this had been put out of sight, because we require honeyed cakes, unguents and the like”The madness of men is that they choose to be miserable when they have it in their power to be contentDiogenes believe hunger to be the best appetizer, and because he waiting until he was hungry or thirsty before he ate or drank, he used to partake of a barley cake with greater pleasure than others did of the costliest of Foods, and enjoyed a drink from a stream of water more than others did their Thasian wineStoic ethics is not concerned with moral right and wrong but with having a “good spirit”, that is, with living a good, happy life or with what is sometimes called moral wisdomFor the stoics, a persons virtue depends on her excellence as s human being—on how well she performs the function for which human beings were designedTo discover for what function people were designed, we need only examine ourselves. We will discover we have certain instincts, as do all animals. We experience hunger; this is nature’s way of getting us to nourish ourselves. We also experience lust; this is nature’s way of getting us to reproduce. But we differ from other animals in on important respect: We have the ability to reason. From this we can conclude that we were designed to be reasonableSinxe nature intended us to be social creatures, we have duties to our fellow men. We should honor our parents, be agreeable to our friends and be concerned with the interests of our countrymenA Stoic sage is free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report. He never feels grief, since he realizes that grief is an irrational contraction of the soul. He doesn’t let anything stop him from doing his duties. Although he drinks wine, he doesn’t do so in order to get drunkSomeone who is not tranquil might find it difficult to do what his reason tells him to do: His emotions will triumph over his intellectThis person might therefore become confused about what things are really good, consequently might fail to pursue them, and might, as a result, failed to attain virtueThe pursuit of virtue results in a degree o tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue