Stoicism in Practice: Voluntary Discomfort (Silent dinner 🍽)

CHALLENGE: Can you sit through a silent dinner? Join us for the Stoic practice of voluntary discomfort.

The silent dinner will run from our arrival until 7 pm. There are QR codes to order food and drinks, so there's absolutely no need for a single word. After the hour is up, we can all break the silence and have a good laugh while we share our experience.

As they say, communication is 80% non-verbal— tune into a different kind of communication and see just how much we can say without a single word!

To keep you accountable, anyone who slips up will be fined a $1 per word. There will be a jar in the middle of the table, so don't forget to bring gold coins! So fun 😁

For the Stoics, voluntary discomfort is a core practice. It's not about seeking out pain, but about intentionally and temporarily giving up a comfort we take for granted. Great thinkers like Seneca believed that by doing things like wearing old clothes or eating simple food, we could train our minds to be resilient. The practice is meant to remind us that we don’t need much to be content and that we are capable of enduring hardships—so when life inevitably throws real discomfort our way, we’re ready for it. This silent dinner is a fun, modern way to practice just that.