2026-01-23
8 分钟Hi.
Today I want to talk about stoicism and language learning.
So you may wonder why.
Well,
stoicism or the attitude of being a stoic is something that has had quite an influence on the history of thought and philosophy.
And I think the whole issue of attitude and mindset is so important in language learning.
It even determines how much time we spend with the language,
which is an important part of language learning.
It all stems from our attitude and mindset.
So someone asked me the other day, do you think you have to be a stoic?
Do you think stoicism is important for language learning?
So I did some research and of course what we normally call stoic is an adjective applied to someone who is sort of doesn't say much,
doesn't respond much, is not very emotional.
which is not quite what Stoicism is.
Stoicism started with Xenon from Cyprus actually,
who is apparently a Phoenician Greek merchant and he had his full cargo of goods lost in a storm and he ended up in Athens and he apparently was in a library and discovered some of the great thinkers of Greek philosophy,
including, of course, Socrates, but others too,
because there's a whole history of this sort of Stoicism starting with the cynics of 500 BC,
Zenon lived at 300 BC,
and he came to the realization that despite the tremendous loss of all his worldly goods,