In the quiet town of Lalgudi, where the days rose and fell with school bells, small successes, and ordinary disappointments, young Ramu had begun to notice how quickly his inner spirit changed. A good mark lifted him high; a sharp word or a lost game brought him low. Worldly goods—praise, position in class, a new possession—made him feel larger. Their absence made him feel smaller. He wished for a steadier spirit that remained the same no matter how things fell out.
One evening on the veranda he spoke of this to his neighbour Venkatesh.
“I rise and fall with every small gain or loss,” Ramu said. “I want the kind of spirit that stays level.”
Venkatesh opened a volume of Seneca and read:
“Regulate your character such that the spirit within feels neither loss nor gain, but remains the same no matter how things fall out. A spirit like that, if heaped with worldly goods, rises supreme to them. A spirit like that, if chance has stripped them of wealth, is not impaired.”
He closed the book and added, “There is an old engraving that simply says, ‘Renew thyself each day.’ These words may sound like the achievement of an expert yogi. But as Ward Farnsworth asks in his book on practising Stoicism, ‘Are you an expert?’ Most of us are not. We are practitioners. And a practitioner can begin today.”
Ramu asked how a boy in Malgudi might practise such regulation.
Venkatesh suggested a simple daily system he called PIES:
- Physical – Walking
- Intellectual – Learning
- Emotional – Caring
- Spiritual – Sharing
“These four small habits,” he said, “can help regulate the character day after day. They keep the spirit steady—neither swollen by good fortune nor shrunk by bad.”
The next morning Ramu began.
He walked to school by a longer route along the river, letting the steady movement quiet his body.
In the evening he spent twenty minutes learning something new—not for marks, but for the pleasure of understanding.
When his younger sister looked troubled, he sat with her and listened instead of brushing her aside. That was caring.
And when he received two sweets from a neighbour, he shared one without being asked. That was sharing.
At first the habits felt awkward. Some days he forgot. Some days the old rising and falling returned when a classmate received praise or when he himself was overlooked. But each evening he returned to the four practices, renewing himself a little.
Weeks passed. A modest examination result arrived—neither brilliant nor poor. The old Ramu would have swung between pride and disappointment. The practising Ramu noticed the movement of his spirit, walked a little longer by the river, learned a fresh page, cared for a friend who had done worse, and shared his notes. By nightfall the spirit had settled again—neither raised too high nor cast down.
One evening he sat again with Venkatesh as the light softened over the street.
“I am not an expert yet,” Ramu said. “But I am a practitioner. Every day I try to regulate my character with those four habits. The spirit inside is learning to stay more the same, whether things go well or not.”
Venkatesh smiled. “That is the path Seneca pointed to. Not sudden perfection, but daily renewal. Keep walking, learning, caring, and sharing. The steady spirit will grow stronger, day after day.”
In the soft dusk of Lalgudi, while other boys still rode the ups and downs of praise and blame, young Ramu walked home with a quieter step. He had begun to build, one ordinary day at a time, a character that could meet both gain and loss with the same calm face. And in that small, steady practice, the spirit within him was learning to remain its own.