Who is your favorite person from history? Why do you respect them?

This is an interesting question. For me, it highlights a brilliant point made by the Stoic Seneca about 2000 years ago. In a nutshell, Seneca said that we should not use the fact that we had terrible parents to make excuses for our weak character or bad behaviour. Seneca was scolding people who whine that they didn’t do well in life because they never had a good role model in their family when they were growing up. Instead, Seneca reminded us that we simply have to find someone outside our family, perhaps in a book (no books in Seneca’s day) who was worth imitating and learn how to be a decent human being by imitating them.   

This advice is quite astonishing when you think about it! Even though it was said around 2000 years ago,  it is still used as one of the most important ideas in modern psychology and counselling, especially Neuro-Linguistic Programming (神経言語プログラミング). That is, modern psychologists and counsellors often say something like ‘If you want to be good at studying/sport/relationships etc.  Find someone who is good at them and copy what they do!’ It’s quite brilliant when you think about it!

To give you a different example of when this idea is commonly used take a look at American politicians.  They often say,  ‘I asked myself ‘’What would Jesus do?’’ This is the same thing. They are using Jesus as a historical figure to help them solve problems. Of course, they are lying because they never actually do what Jesus would have done, but that is another issue…

Anyway, to cut a long story short, my favorite people from history are the Stoics because they tried so hard to be good people (whatever that is) and help others find peace and tranquility.  As a bonus, it was all intended to be for the benefit of society in general.

In the end though, there are so many amazing people in history it’s hard to pick one. I admire people with courage who try to help others such as Harriet Tubman and the Japanese official Chiune Sugihara who issued visas to Jews in the second world war.  But then, the list should perhaps also include artists who influenced the course of history such as Beethoven.  So,  I have to confess that, in the end, I can’t narrow it down to one single individual.