I keep thinking about this over and over again, and I'm strangely uplifted and excited by it. I've thought of the view in the past, buI dismissed it as "settling". I thought that the doctrine is simply that we should manipulate ourselves, like hypnotically, into believing that everything that happens is right, or that we did every action.

Stoicism has a reputation of being turned to during hard times, but ignored during other times. So I thought this was how Stoicism was, a way of saying something good about bad events, you can justify everything by appealing to fate, or destiny, or the force, or providence, or what have you. I thought of it as a philosophy for losers and failures.

But looking at the universe under two perspectives, as an individual and as a cosmos, it seems similar to a distinction that Spinoza made between "natura naturans" and "natura naturata", that is nature in its active and passive aspects, respectively. But this is reversed: For us, the identity is between Will and Assent. Will is active, Assent is passive. We Will by Assenting. We also Assent by Willing.

I just started Crossfit yesterday, for example. I did it by trying to perfect my Will which is also my Assent. Judged stoically, I didn't do too well. I'm way out of shape by Crossfit standards, and the competition environment is foreign to me. The coach was going to give us extra exercises for the teams with the lowest scores. I even said to myself, "This will be my last time." But I said to myself before this, "I'll get through this one, then..." and I got through it.

Our team was the lowest scoring, but it was a good score. I performed low for the group, but I performed well. I'm going again tomorrow, even though there are at least three reasons not to, but none of the reasons are by logical.

You will the act, not the outcome. Perfecting the will involves willing as great as possible, yet still being indifferent to the result.