Wisdom: exercising your skills on the guitar and piano. Courage: entering a shop and speaking to the lady behind the counter. Justice: helping your wife in the garden. Temperance: stepping away from the computer.

Today was a day off. Do you need a break from your stoicism? Marcus Aurelius would say all you need do is close your eyes and you are in the most private of spaces. Should you ‘rest’ your stoicism, like you rest your legs after a run? Whatever: the colour of your soul – in the sense Marcus uses it – should take on that of the stoic. It would take more than one day to wash out that colour.

Are you, then, a stoic?

Are you one who practices stoicism?