True happiness, therefore, consists in
virtue. And what will this virtue bid you to do? Not to think of anything as
bad or good which is connected neither with virtue nor with wickedness. And in
the next place, both to endure unmoved the assaults of evil, and, as far as is
right, to form a god out of what is good.
What reward does she promise you for
this campaign? An enormous one, and one that raises you to the level of the
gods. You shall be subject to no restraint and to no want; you shall be free,
safe, unhurt; you shall fail in nothing that you attempt; you shall be debarred
from nothing; everything shall turn out according to your wish; no misfortune
shall befall you; nothing shall happen to you except what you expect and hope
for. . . .
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 16 (tr Stewart)
We
constantly label things in our lives as “good” or “bad”. That promotion at the
firm, the one that comes with a bigger salary, more vacation days, and the
window office, is surely something good, or at least that’s what they told me
back in Boston. The fact that my truck broke down, my dog died, and my girl
left me is surely something bad, or at least that’s what they tell me in
Oklahoma.
Yet it
has been precisely that sort of thinking that has made me miserable. It reduces
to the scramble to acquire and avoid what is outside of us. That every thing in
Nature, each with its own identity and purpose, is good in its own being is
hopefully clear enough, but that things are as they are is neither here nor
there when it comes to my own happiness. What is good or bad, as specific to my
own human nature, concerns itself with one aspect alone: how well or how poorly
am I thinking, choosing and acting? The value of anything and everything else
for me depends entirely on whether I use those conditions to assist me in
living in virtue, and to avoid living in vice.
The
Stoic teaching of indifference tells us that we should never consider any
circumstance of Fortune as itself beneficial or harmful, desirable or
undesirable. Hard experience has long taught me that getting the raise, or
winning the girl, can be just as much of a curse as it can be a blessing. It
has less to do with what I have, than with what I do with what I have. Nor is
absence any worse than presence, because an absence offers just as much of an
opportunity for action.
Once I
have changed the parameters of happiness to what is within my power, to how I
can make good use of any situation for my own character, there is nothing
further I could need, nothing that can hinder me, and nothing beyond my own
wishes. I already have whatever I require, and whatever life can give, or can take
away, is just another chance to live with prudence, fortitude, temperance, and
justice. Do right or wrong to me, and I will be the only one who decides
whether I will do right or wrong in the face of it.
The
doctors and the experts have many fancy names for it, but I have always just called
it the Black Dog. As the years have gone by, the melancholic weight seems only
to get worse, and I have wasted too much of my energy casting blame or cursing
fate. It was only when I began to work with pain, and not against it, that I could
learn to live with more freedom.
It hurt,
but what was I going to do with that hurt? I began to seek out ways, seemingly
insignificant at first, where I could do something good by means of that
experience. It didn’t matter if anyone else knew, because I knew, and my own
estimation is the key to my happiness. The victory only needed to be mine.
Fortune
is itself never really good or bad at all, though what I choose to make of it
can be very good or very bad. Once again, my old musical hero Howard Jones was
probably thinking in Taoist or Buddhist terms, though they could just as well
be Stoic, when he wondered: “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”
Written in 1/2012
Image: Giacinto Gimignani, Fortune Favors Ignorance and Repels Virtue (1672)
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