Fantasies

Stoic prompts

You have a fantasy, and you realize that acting out that fantasy would mean violating one or another of your values. You worry that the fantasy itself makes you a bad person, because of this.

It does not. No thought, on its own, makes you a bad person. A fantasy is a story, and many stories can be safely enjoyed, even though acting them out would make you a bad person. The thing to watch for is this: that every fantasy carries a suggestion that maybe you could act it out – that maybe you want to have the thing, the person, the experience that is fantasized about.

The test of acting ethically is not whether you have the fantasy, or even whether you enjoy thinking about it, but how you choose to act. Do you try to live out the fantasy, in whole or in part? Do you enjoy it as a story – alone or with someone you love? Or do you leave it where it is, there in your mind, as a pleasant distraction to be disregarded?

As long as you remember that distinction – between having the thought and acting – then you can rely on your judgment to tell you how to deal with it. The power to act well remains yours, always.

This podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Music is from the track "Which That is This" by Doctor Turtle, also distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. It can be found at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Doctor_Turtle/Jonahs_Message_for_New_York/Which_That_Is_This

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