One of the most popular philosophical schools of the ancient world was the Stoics. Their teachings haven't really been in vogue in the last couple of millennia, but at least they found their way into the common consciousness as an adjective. In popular imagination, a stoic is someone who takes the travails of life in stride, a stone statue of a human who endures pain and suffering with equanimity. Most of us have met stoic characters predominantly on the silver screen. The oriental monk, the native Indian warrior, the lone cowboy (or its more recent manifestation, the hard-boiled private detective) firing bullets and one-liners with equal skill. The picture these characters convey - that of a silent, strong, solitary figure, emotionally reserved to the extreme - is not entirely misleading, but incomplete.
I got interested in Stoicism a couple of years ago when I stumbled into a book about it. Since then, the number of Stoicism-related podcasts, articles, and book recommendations I've come across seems to be growing slowly but steadily. In the time of custom-tailored newsfeeds and recommendation algorithms, it's hard to see if this really is a general trend in the outside world or simply my information bubble is getting tighter. But I could readily find some reasons why it would be a genuine phenomenon. In a constantly accelerating and ever less religious world many look for some practical guidance in life especially if it has the veneer of ancient wisdom.
And the Stoics are certainly ancient, and as practical as it gets as far as philosophy goes. Its founders had some theories and assumptions of and about the world as a whole, but these came secondary to the central question of their philosophy:
How to live a good life
The Stoic answer was to live a virtuous life. They defined the four cardinal virtues as Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, and Justice. Each of these covers a number of related traits, but they can be summarized as follows.
Justice is having a moral compass. Temperance is the ability to restrain oneself and avoid excesses. Wisdom is the capacity to find the right way of dealing with life situations. And Courage, encompassing both moral and physical courage, is the strength to stand up for what is right even in the face of personal danger.
The Stoics maintained that life visits hardships and difficulties on every one of us, and pursuing these virtues is the only thing that can help one overcome the challenges and find real and enduring happiness. Furthermore, being virtuous is both necessary and sufficient for that. Fortune, health, success, or the opposite of all these are not irrelevant but they are of secondary importance.
So far these are not earth-shattering revelations and they are not supported by evidence in a very obvious way. Everyone knows that life can be hard and courage and wisdom and the rest are important after all, and we all know people, personally or from history books, who have these traits to some degree and yet are or were unhappy.
What made the Stoics tick and what makes them interesting is not so much their concept of virtues, but a handful of practical ideas directly applicable to life.
Recognize what is and is not under your control
The first and most important insight of Stoic philosophy is that there are only a few things under your control in this world, and you are responsible for those and you have to accept the rest as they come. If your house burnt down, it will do you little good crying over it endlessly. Making it not happen is not in your power. What is in your power is to interpret the situation and choose your reaction to it.
Shrugging off the destruction of one's home is probably a step too far in an elevator pitch, so let's take a more mundane example. Imagine someone treating you impolitely in the supermarket. Such an event can trigger very different reactions in different people. Some would just be annoyed briefly and forget about it in a minute. Some would find it funny. Some would be enraged. Some would feel so disrespected that it would gnaw at their insecurity for the rest of the day. The Stoic insight in this situation is that the incident already happened and there is nothing you can do about that. Nothing. But you can decide how you choose to react to it. If you are working yourself up over it again and again, and ruin your day, that is your own damn fault. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, you could use the opportunity for self-improvement. To practice how to find humor or to understand yourself better in such situations. Or how to prevent them. Or how to handle them better. In short, life constantly throws stuff at you, and it's up to you to make the best of them. This is how it is.
“Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them.” — Epictetus
The idea that the events happening to you don't directly influence you, but are filtered through personal interpretation, is a very modern one (it arguably forms the basis of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). It also has interesting implications.
Dettachment
One of the most fundamental and radical of those implications is the realization that you can at will disengage from your current predicament. You can be happy or find tranquility even if you are poor, sick, or down on your luck. If at this point it's tempting to tell the ancient Stoics that "it's easy to say that", then keep in mind that they lived in an era when the average lifespan didn't extend beyond 30 years, and more people died of plague, war, or famine than of old age. One of the most famous of ancient Stoics, Epictetus, was a cripple and a slave. (Two thousand years ago, either of those would have been enough to ruin your day, and all your days).
The Stoics encouraged detachment not only from your life circumstances but from possessions as well, both personal and material. This point is worth elaborating on because it is easy to interpret the wrong way and therefore it is the source of the most common misunderstanding about being a stoic.
The Stoics didn't say you should not enjoy or value what the world can offer. The emotionally impoverished stoic is a misconception. They were not necessarily ascetics who despised physical pleasures. They acknowledged that being healthy is better than being sick. Beings wealthy is preferable to being poor. Having friends is better than being lonely. As the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, arguably the most famous of all ancient Stoics, put it, if you have to live in a palace, you might as well live well in a palace. You should enjoy good food, health, the company of friends. But you also should avoid becoming dependent on them. All your loved ones will die eventually. One day, at the latest on your last, you will lose everything you have. If you base your happiness on your possessions and personal circumstances, they can be taken away at any moment.
When you kiss your children good night, remind yourself that they can be dead tomorrow. Goulish as it sounds, the Stoics didn't advise it to indulge their morbid fascinations but to remind themselves of the importance of counting your blessings. Don't take your loved ones for granted and think you have all the time in the world to enjoy their presence.
Speaking of misconceptions, let's address another one. The Stoics are sometimes thought to be loners (see gunslingers and private dicks). This is not true. The Stoics recognized that man is a social animal and like good Greek citizens, they actually advocated for engagement in public life.
Treating life as a training ground
Recognizing that your views and reactions are the only things you are really in control of is the main stoic idea. Treating your life as a training practice is the next best one. A real stoic looks at obstacles in life as challenges. Let's see what fate or the gods can throw at us. The increasing difficulties are like leveling up in a computer game. Your boss told you that you have only one day to prepare the presentation instead of a week? Let's see how much you can do in that time span. You are visiting a country and lost your passport on the day you should be flying home? That's level 2. You had eye surgery and have to live as a blind man for two weeks? At least level 3! A challenge worthy of a seasoned player. The reward is always the satisfaction you get from your accomplishment.
Practice and self-improvement
As the previous section implies, the Stoics were also believers in another very modern notion, continuous self-improvement. They devised a number of daily practices to hone their skills for the game called Life. The fundamental ones are journaling, the end-of-day review, and the so called negative visualization.
The last one is the practice you should start your day with. Imagine the ways things go awry in the day ahead of you and mentally prepare for them. As Navy SEALS have plan A, B, and C for every mission, so should you be prepared for the most likely things to go wrong.
You should keep a journal. It is a true and trusted practice to help consolidate your thoughts and give the opportunity to see the path you've been travelling.
The evening meditation is what you should do the last time before going to bed. This is the time to reflect on the day. What went well, what went badly, what should have been done differently. Once I listened to a podcaster who rated his performance every day: wage negiotiation went reasonably well, 7/10; handling the stress of the traffic not so much, 3/10; explaining the kid why homework is important could have gone better, 4/10. You get the idea. Honestly admitting the mistakes enables you to avoid them next time, and high scores boost your confidence.
The Appeal
The appeal of Stoicism is multifold.
Its daily practice of journaling and of mediations to start and end the day with hammer its message home, well, every day. To be a stoic is to live like a stoic, and the presence or absence of discipline to observe the routine tells you undisputably if you are on the right track or not.
Said routine also provides a framework for life engendering a sense of stability that humans appreciate. It also creates constant opportunities for the practitioner to see her progress, which can create a virtuous cycle.
The Stoic approach of explicitly confronting difficulties and treating them as challenges combined with the clear separation between the things in and outside of our control removes a great deal of anxiety from life. Most of our anxieties come from worrying about other people's opinions, the threat of bad things happening to us, and the perceived lack of control over our own life. Stoicism addresses these problems head-on.
For some reason, the example of this I like most is that of Bryan Cranston, the lead actor in Breaking Bad. His advice to fellow actors was that you should not waste your thoughts on whether you get the role or not. Go to the audition, do the best you can, and drive satisfaction from your performance. If you gave your best, then you did all that was in your power. From that point, the decision is taken out of your hands anyway.
Summary
To summarize the most important points, Stoicism is a life philosophy that is light on theory and heavy on practice. Its concept of virtues may sound a bit anachronistic and high-brow for a modern reader, but its practical tools are as fresh as they get. A Stoic accepts whatever is out of his control without complaint, but takes full responsibility for his reactions to them. For him or her, every event in life is a subject for personal interpretation and an opportunity for self-improvement, every obstacle is a challenge to be conquered. The fleeting nature of life and all things material makes the good things even more precious. Therefore, they are to be enjoyed but not to be dependent on.
Is it just Zen for Westerners?
If the description of an ideal Stoic reminds someone of a Zen Buddhist monk, it's not a coincidence. The two philosophies overlap substantially. The hands-on, no-nonsense approach to life, the constant reminders of the impermanence of things, and the aspiration for tranquility and equanimity in a chaotic world characterize both schools to a roughly equal degree. The next post will explore how these two compare to each other in detail.