I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

It isn’t events themsleves that disturb people, but only their judgements about them.
-Epictetus, Enchiridion, 5

The stoic talks about the observing eye and the perceiving eye. The observing eye is objectively looking at an event. The perceiving eye is what we perceive the event means. We should strive to not let our perceiving eye overrule something objective. That’s what causes us to make judgements on these events. Looking at things objectively and logically causes less disturbance. A good example of this is email. Email is toneless and often we read email with tones that may not reflect the true intent. I’ve worked on keeping email, IMs, and texts toneless because we don’t necessarily know how someone feels as they’re sending the message.