A Spiritual Exercise Concerning Max Scherzer

In his Discourses, noted Roman Stoic Epictetus proclaims that, to live a life free from anxiety, that each of us must become like a “spiritual athlete.” To that end, NotGraphs presents this exercise, with a view towards helping to tighten and tone the spirits of the readership.

Society is like she-bears; our spiritual health, like small children being eaten by she-bears.

Notes
Consider, this hypothetical scene.

A man announces — in his home, late this morning — a man announces that he’s anticipating, with mounting anticipation, the very enigmatic Max Scherzer’s start in Detroit at 1:05pm ET.

That man’s wife responds by suggesting that, perhaps — owing to how the man hadn’t been there in a couple of days and, due to the imminent arrival of a house guest, was unlikely to go there over the next couple — that perhaps the man in question should, indeed, go the gym with her at 1pm ET, when her yoga class happens to begin.

What should the man do in this entirely hypothetical scenario that didn’t just unfold in a certain, unnamed author’s house about an hour ago in Madison, Wisconsin?

Exercise
While physical exercise is, of course, important for preserving the health of the body, spiritual exercise is important for preserving the health of the mind — and while there are numerous periodicals and wives who freely espouse on the virtues of the former, there are many fewer true advocates of the latter.

As to the question at hand, however, Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) addresses it directly in this excerpt from his Epistle No. 41:

No man ought to glory except in that which is his own… Suppose that he has a retinue of comely slaves and a beautiful house, that his farm is large and large his income; none of these things is in the man himself; they are all on the outside. Praise the quality in him which cannot be given or snatched away, that which is the peculiar property of the man. Do you ask what this is? It is soul, and reason brought to perfection in the soul. For man is a reasoning animal. Therefore, man’s highest good is attained, if he has fulfilled the good for which nature designed him at birth. And what is it which this reason demands of him? The easiest thing in the world — to live in accordance with his own nature. But this is turned into a hard task by the general madness of mankind; we push one another into vice.

Indeed, the man from our totally fictional and hypothetical and just-made-up scenario must use this opportunity both to (a) discern what reason — his reason — demands of him in this case and (b) make a point of abiding by it. Should he go to the gym that’s stupid and a 15-minute walk away and doesn’t have any — like, seriously, zero — beers at it, or should he recognize that every one of the very enigmatic Max Scherzer’s starts is a gift, a refulgent light, that illuminates him (i.e. the hypothetical man that isn’t a real, specific person or anything like that) from within?