Controlling Our Sad Emotions

In letter 63 by Seneca, he talks about how we should not grieve when we lose a loved one.  People who grieve for a extended amount of time are just doing it for the attention and sympathy they may get from others.  He also talks how if we do lose a friend to death then we should be happy about it because the more friends we lose that means we can be happy that we actual had friends in our life and that we are better off than someone who only has one friend to lose.  These ideas from Seneca may seem strange to many people but Seneca was a Stoic.  That means that he believed that we should do away with the emotions of pain and hardship and only have emotions of happiness.  With grief comes sadness and pain and that is a reason why Seneca does not like people who grieve.  I like the idea of people doing away with all the emotions that cause people pain and hardship.  It is not necessarily eliminating those emotions but when you feel them you control them and pretend like they do not even exist.  This is something I actually am pretty good at now that my sadness and other similar emotions are basically eliminated.  That does not mean I still do not know when something sad happens and can't sympathize for someone who had something bad happen to them but when I feel those emotions, they do not affect me and is like they do not even exist.  I think a lot of people would really benefit if they looked at life and everything with a positive outlook and not such a sad and miserable outlook on life.  If people are able to essentially put away those emotions that bring us pain and hardship, everyone would be much happier and better off in my opinion.  That does not mean we are still not able to recognize when something is sad, it just means we know how to control it and we do not have to show that emotion.