Tell me, do you think it is more
fitting for a free man by his own labor to procure for himself the necessities
of life or to receive them from others? But surely it is plain that not to
require another's help for one's need is more dignified than asking for it.
If all this profound talk about a unity with Nature
is still too strange for me, then I can also look to another benefit that comes
from living close to the land: where else might I find such a great degree of self-reliance
and freedom?
Stoicism argues that we become better and happier
the more we take responsibility for ourselves, and the less we depend upon
those things that are beyond our power. We can all find our own ways to best
achieve this, of course, yet I can’t help but recognize that I am hardly as
independent as I would like to think I am.
I wish to rule myself, even as I remain attached to
so many unnecessary complexities and luxuries, am bound by conditions that infringe
on the free exercise of my conscience, and am for too ready to let someone else
do for me what I should be doing for myself.
If I could produce the food I eat, or make the clothes
I wear, or craft more of the tools I use in daily life, or provide my own
shelter and comfort from what is immediately around me, I would be in a better
place to practice a Stoic self-sufficiency.
This hardly requires withdrawing into isolation or
reducing life to some bestial state. To support oneself does not exclude
helping others to support themselves, and simplicity should not be confused
with denying ourselves what is necessary.
As creatures of reason and choice, we are made to
cooperate with one another. My wife and I will often joke that being codependent
is not as the same as being interdependent, but I would suggest that there is
indeed a real difference between living someone’s life for him and assisting
someone in living his own life on his own terms.
I never cease to be amazed at how I end up wanting
less whenever I have to make anything for myself. Perhaps I have discovered a
deeper value in my conditions when I must toil for them, and so I appreciate them
more, or perhaps I simply no longer have the time to wallow in trivialities,
but whatever the case, I find myself happier with a very few things that I have
crafted.
It can be as simple as a meal prepared with food
you have grown or raised, or brewing your own beer instead of buying it in bottles
from a store, or building your own table rather than having it dropped off by a
truck. It means more, precisely because it came from you.
Some people are proud of the things they are able
to buy, and some people are proud of what they produce with their own hands. I
really do think the difference speaks volumes, and I don’t think it is overly
sentimental to say that this is what Musonius means by the contrast between the
city man and the country man.
Written in 11/1999
IMAGE: Peter Paul Rubens, A Landscape with a Shepherd and His Flock (c. 1638)
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