Appropriate
acts are in general measured by the relations they are concerned with.
'He
is your father.' This means you are called on to take care of him, give way to him
in all things, bear with him if he reviles or strikes you.
'But
he is a bad father.'
Well,
have you any natural claim to a good father? No, only to a father.
'My
brother wrongs me.'
Be
careful then to maintain the relation you hold to him, and do not consider what
he does, but what you must do if your purpose is to keep in accord with nature.
For
no one shall harm you, without your consent; you will only be harmed, when you
think you are harmed. You will only discover what is proper to expect from
neighbor, citizen, or praetor, if you get into the habit of looking at the
relations implied by each.
—Epictetus,
The Handbook, Chapter 30 (tr
Matheson)
In the
bittersweet days of my youth, no party was ever complete without hearing Janet
Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” Along with other phrases, such as
“Where’s the beef?” and “Don’t have a cow, man!” they became the slogans for a
whole decade.
The
young, of course, are prone to feeling independent, headstrong, and demanding,
but I saw the absurd reach of not only the phrase, but also the whole
associated attitude, when, many years later, I asked a neighbor to move a car
that had blocked me in. “Uh uh!” came the impassioned reply. “What have you done for me lately?”
Stoicism
would remind us that we are tempted to define something by what is done to it,
when we should rather define it by what it does. Grammarians also tell us that
the active voice is usually stronger and clearer than the passive voice. When
teaching political philosophy, I always asked students to distinguish between
rights, what others owe to me, and responsibilities, what I owe to others.
Should I
see any human relationship in terms of my entitlement to be treated a certain
way, or my obligation to treat others a certain way? Remember that the former
is outside of my power, and therefore should never be anything that determines
or defines me. The latter is completely with my power, and does in fact
determine and define how well or how poorly I have chosen to live.
A Stoic,
understanding the priority of action over passion, and of how I think and act
over how others think and act, will now have a very different view of what
it means to be a parent, a spouse, or a friend.
I always
knew deep down that my parents were some of the most caring and committed ones you
could find, but that didn’t stop me from complaining about some of the things
they asked me to do. What I was not seeing was that my own preferences hardly
defined their responsibility as parents, and that what I wanted given to me was
not necessarily what they needed to give.
My first
attempt at finding that companion for life was marred by much the same problem.
I remained in good graces as long as I did what was useful, and when this was
no longer the case, I buckled under the weight of the loss. Note that each of
us defined our relationship by what the other did.
A true
friendship of any sort is based on the ability to give, and not just to receive,
to love, and not just to be loved, and to follow through with a commitment that
never has terms or conditions attached to it.
This is
why I see red when anyone tells me that she is happy being a wife because her
husband is faithful, or happy being a father because his son is so obedient, or
happy being a friend to someone who always offers a shoulder to cry on. I
rather ask myself if I could still be a good husband if my wife was disloyal,
if I could still be a good father if my son was a delinquent, or still be a
good friend to someone who wasn’t always reliable.
I could
indeed have an angry father, or a thoughtless wife, or an ungrateful son. None
of that should determine whether I am a forgiving son, a dedicated husband, or
a caring father. If a friend has treated me poorly, this hardly allows me to
treat him poorly.
Stoicism
asks me to live this way not just out of obligation, but assures me that this
is also the path to true contentment. As always, I can be happy if I rule
myself, and I make myself miserable when I let myself be ruled by others.
Written in 9/1999
No comments:
Post a Comment