On flipping through Meditations this morning, came across this:
A rock thrown in the air. It loses nothing by coming down, gained nothing by going up.
That’s a very Zen quote. The rock is impervious to the state imposed on it from outside forces. Thinking about it from a lens of stoicism, we are (or should be) rocks. Ignore the forces outside of our control. Very existential. I wonder, does the rock get chipped by striking the ground? Possibly.