The Daily Stoic

Perhaps you remember the 90s hit by the band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “The Impression That I Get.” You know, the ‘neeeeevvvvvvveeeerrrrrr had to knock on wood’ song? If you haven’t listened to it in a while, you should, because it holds up surprisingly well.Anyway, there are a couple of lines at the beginning of the third verse that go like this:I'm not a coward, I've just never been testedI'd like to think that if I was I would passIt’s as if Dicky Barrett, the Bosstones’ lead singer and songwriter, was writing straight from the lessons of the Stoics, because it aligns perfectly with one of Seneca’s most beautiful observations. "I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune,” he writes of everyone who has lived a soft or sheltered life. “You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you."Not even you.That’s the question the song is about. That’s the angst it is trying to express. Yes, it’s great t