What is the passage mainly about?

Focusing on what we can control and releasing what we cannot reduces suffering and works better. (The Stoics divided the controllable from the uncontrollable and taught aiming effort at the former while releasing the latter.)

According to the Stoics, which of these is within our control?

Our own judgments and choices (The text lists 'our own judgments, choices, and efforts' as within our control, and the weather, opinions, and outcomes as not.)

The examples of the traveler and the athlete are meant to show that we control:

Our response and effort, but not the final outcome. (Each figure controls only how they wait, train, or compete - not the storm or the win.)

In 'This is not a recipe for passivity,' the word "passivity" most nearly means:

inaction and doing nothing (The next sentence contrasts it with Stoics who 'acted vigorously,' so passivity means inaction.)

What Is in Our Control: Level 4 Reading Comprehension Questions

The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome built their whole practice on a single division. Some things, they observed, are up to us, and some are not. Our own judgments, choices, and efforts are within our control. Nearly everything else - the weather, the past, other people's opinions, the outcome of our best plans - is not. Suffering, they argued, comes largely from confusing the two.

The mistake is easy to make. We pour worry into things we cannot move, such as whether a decision already made will turn out well, and we neglect the one thing we can move, which is what we do next. A traveler cannot control whether the storm delays the ship, only how they wait for it. An athlete cannot control whether they win, only how they train and how they compete.

This is not a recipe for passivity. The Stoics were soldiers, statesmen, and slaves who acted vigorously in the world. Their point was about where to aim your emotional investment. Do your part fully, they said, then release your grip on the result, because the result was never yours to hold in the first place.

There is relief in this, once it is practiced rather than merely understood. To stop demanding that the uncontrollable obey you is to set down a weight you were never required to carry. What remains is lighter and, oddly, more effective: attention spent only where it can actually do some good.

Comprehension questions