The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Friday, October 27, 2017

Epictetus, The Handbook 14: Playing the Fool



If you wish to make progress, you must be content in external matters to seem a fool and a simpleton; do not wish men to think you know anything, and if any should think you to be somebody, distrust yourself.

For know that it is not easy to keep your will in accord with nature and at the same time keep outward things; if you attend to one you must needs neglect the other.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 13 (tr Matheson)

Being the outsider and the oddball come very easily to me, not out of any virtue, but because my very disposition is that of a gadfly and iconoclast. I’m simply too contrary to conform. Yet I can use this annoying aspect of my personality to my advantage, if only I remember that I shouldn’t avoid being popular out of stubbornness, but out of a deliberate conviction that my merit is not measured by others.

I find that this isn’t just a matter of being indifferent to reputation, but quite often deliberately avoiding it. As Epictetus suggests, we should be very careful about being liked, not because being respected is in and of itself bad at all, but because of the reasons why people might be thinking well of us. All of us have the weakness of being impressed by appearances over content, and by people who put on a good show. Is that what actually made someone pay attention to me? If so, I need to be living more honestly and sincerely.

I always find that I am most drawn to the very people who do not desire recognition. I took my family to a medieval fair recently, where there were rows upon rows of performers and craftsmen, many of them putting on an elaborate show of their skills or trades. The largest crowds gathered around the biggest spectacles, but I found myself drawn to an older, unassuming fellow who quietly worked on a delicate glass painting. I watched and admired his art, and I don’t think he was even aware that I was standing there. He was absorbed in the joy of his work, not in the display.

People will occasionally take interest in my Stoic musings, and perhaps nod in some sort of agreement, but I do think most of us are hardly aware of how radical a transformation of self the Stoic Turn entails. I have had to try and teach myself that all the years of effort at making myself succeed by the measures of things outside of me was not the way to my happiness.

Though hardly with any bitterness or malice on my part, I have had to part ways with many people I love dearly, but who still think that the value of living is in the achieving of status and recognition. This hardly means, however, that the person who pursues a Stoic life is lonely or isolated. It simply means that my relations with others need to flip, such that I am concerned that I myself act with love, rather than the pursuit of being loved.

Written in 10/2015

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