On restraining your will

Montaigne:

A quarter of an ounce of endurance can provide for such discomforts. I find that the remedy which works for me is, from the outset, to purchase my freedom at the cheapest price I can get; I know that I have by this means escaped much travail and hardship. With very little effort I stop the first movement of my emotions, giving up whatever begins to weigh on me before it bears me off. If you do not stop the start, you will never stop the race. If you cannot slam the door against your emotions you will never chase them out once they have got in. If you cannot struggle through the beginning, you will never get through the end; nor will you withstand the building’s fall, if you cannot stand its being shaken.

‘Etenim ipsae se imlellunt ubi semel a ratione discessum est; ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi.‘

[Once they have departed from reason the emotions drive themselves on; their very weakness indulges itself, venturing imprudently on to the deep and finding no place in which it can heave to.]

No wonder I love reading Montaigne so much, for I continually find myself being mirrored in his philosophies. Those who know me will have come to realise just exactly how much of Stoicism I subscribe to. But is this always really necessary? It has become so engrained in the way I lay out my thoughts in all matters, that the will is hardly ever needed to restrain [my emotions], or to be restrained.