Don’t React!

On pain, insult, and that moment before the mind kicks in.

They say it’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it. The line goes back to the Stoics—Greek philosophers like Epictetus and the now-famous Marcus Aurelius—who believed that while we don’t control the events of life, we always control our response. I don’t know how this idea landed back then—whether it was radical or just a mutter in the din of empire—but it has endured. The idea is central to Buddhism too, though I didn’t meet it there first. But I was always curious why a fundamental yet counterintuitive idea like this was born and practiced both in the West and the East. That too, back in the BCs.

I first came across it in Haruki Murakami’s book on running. He wrote, simply: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” At the time, I had just taken up running myself. I was devout about it, as one often is with a new practice—observing each little shift in sensation with the zeal of a convert. So when I read that line, I was struck. It felt true. I remember telling almost everyone I met that day about it, the way you do when an idea finds you at just the right moment. I wanted to feel it. And test it.

So the next day, I ran farther than ever before. I pushed myself into pain—not recklessly, but curiously. I wanted to understand it, feel it without resisting it. Naturally, I suffered. I remember at least a hundred moments when I wanted to give up. But somewhere along the way, the suffering peeled off. Not through any profound realization, but because when you stay with pain, something else often kicks in. The pain remains—but it begins to taste earned. Almost sweet. Like something metabolized. I’m sure endorphins played their part, but I came to the lived conclusion that Murakami’s line was true enough.

That took me back to Stoicism, and also to Buddhism, where suffering isn’t caused by pain itself but by our resistance to it. By wanting things to be otherwise. Wanting life to obey us.

I started applying the same lens to emotional pain. Like insults. If someone insulted me—and they weren’t someone I particularly respected—I used to feel a kind of justice in giving it right back. That felt fair. Balanced. Comic-book karma. But if the person had more social power, I wouldn’t strike back. I’d swallow it. Then stew. Nurse the hurt for weeks or months, until either the wound dulled or I got my moment to reclaim the score. It wasn’t noble. It was just human.

But then I started trying something else. I didn’t react.

And that small pause—that wedge between impulse and action—showed me something remarkable. When you don’t react, when you don’t immediately strike or retreat, you get to see what’s actually happening inside you. The shame. The cramp. The sudden heat in the chest. The brain spinning up a hundred ideas for comeback. All of it. A whole mini-opera staged in the nervous system. That’s what an insult does. Or a put-down. Or failure. It charges your whole body.

But when you observe rather than obey it, the show starts to lose steam. The thoughts slow. The heat cools. Just like when you stop running, your body slowly returns to baseline. It’s the same with emotion.

And the best part? Once that storm settles, you can think clearly. You can see the situation for what it is—not through the lens of personal injury, but with some distance. And more often than not, you find that no response is needed. No counter-blow. No balancing act. Sometimes, further down the road, you might even feel sympathy for the person who tried to hurt you. You see they’re flailing. Or small. Or just lost.

But that’s later. Much later.

This practice—of not reacting, and watching what arises instead—is ancient. The Stoics knew it. The Buddhists taught it. And we, in our own messy way, know it too. We forget, but we know.

Yes, the ego will protest at first. Loudly. It will call you weak or passive for not “standing up for yourself.” But that’s only the beginning. Not reacting doesn’t mean you do nothing. It means you choose when and how to act—from clarity rather than compulsion.

It’s not about other people. It’s not about bad people.

It’s only about how much control we have over ourselves. Or how much we can grow.

And it begins with this: Don’t react.