What the insult can't reach

A coworker takes a dig at how you do your job. A customer talks down to you like you're furniture. A manager forwards your idea with their own name on it. The heat rises fast, and for a minute the whole thing feels like damage — like something was done to you that you have to carry home.

Slow it down and ask what was actually taken. Your skill is intact. Your honesty is intact. The care you bring to the work is exactly where it was this morning. The comment changed how someone behaved toward you. It changed nothing about the worth that's yours to keep.

Seneca pushed this to its edge: the wise person "has invested everything in himself, has entrusted nothing to fortune," so "no injury can reach the wise man" (Of the Firmness of the Wise Man III, Stewart). You don't have to be a sage to use the half of it that's plain — the part of you that does the work, that holds to what's right, isn't on the table when someone takes a swing. They can reach your mood. They can't reach that.

This is courage off the battlefield: not pretending the dig didn't land, but knowing what it couldn't touch, and refusing to hand it more than it took.