Seneca, Moral Letters 13.8

Let us, then, look carefully into the matter. It is likely that some troubles will befall us; but it is not a present fact. How often has the unexpected happened! How often has the expected never come to pass! 

 

And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail to run out to meet your suffering? You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives; so look forward meanwhile to better things.

 

What shall you gain by doing this? Time. There will be many happenings meanwhile which will serve to postpone, or end, or pass on to another person, the trials which are near or even in your very presence. 

 

A fire has opened the way to flight. Men have been let down softly by a catastrophe. Sometimes the sword has been checked even at the victim's throat. Men have survived their own executioners. Even bad fortune is fickle. Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime it is not. So look forward to better things.

 

The fact remains that I don’t know what will occur, or how it will come to pass, or whether I will find myself in riches or in rags, loved or despised, given pleasure or pain. 

 

The Stoic understands that this has nothing to do with “luck”, because something cannot come from nothing. Rather, it is about the limits of my own awareness, which serve as a healthy reminder to mind my own business, attending to the improvement of myself. Providence will unfold as it should, and I also have a part to play. 

 

And even if great hardships were to lie ahead, agonizing over the future would not offer the tiniest bit of relief; quite the contrary, it would only magnify and extend the suffering. 

 

I think of all those sayings and passages I scoffed at when I was younger, that now make me pause in reverence. An oldie but goodie: 

 

Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

 

To find joy in the time that I have is not merely about putting off some inevitable doom for as long as possible, but rather about appreciating each and every moment that is granted, for its own sake, and learning that the present does not have to be ruined by either the past or the future. 

 

I know this all too well from my own blunders, where mistakes from long ago made me assume that I then had nothing worthwhile to hope for, when all I needed to do was embrace the now, and to cast aside the weight of what literally did not exist. 

 

It turns out that only the negativity of my attitude brings out the worst. To be quite honest, for all the things that I bemoan, I was met with beautiful opportunities far more often than I was ever beaten down. Sometimes, in a blessed irony, the beating down itself was transformed into a beautiful opportunity. 

 

Situations can change in an instant, or they can also gradually evolve into something surprising. Most importantly, I can always turn my thinking around, and realize that what I expect, whether good or bad, will very regularly be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

I am the one who decides that, not anyone else. There is no need to worry if I do what is right now. 

Written in 6/2012

Stoic Snippets 88

Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.7

Abandoned Places 19

 

Nature 21

Stockdale on Stoicism 9

And so on to a long list of things which some unreflective people assume they're assured of controlling to the last instance—your reputation, for example. Do what you will, it's at least as fickle as your station in life. Others decide what your reputation is. Try to make it as good as possible, but again, don't get hooked on it. 

In your heart, when you get out the key and open up that old roll-top desk where you really keep your stuff, don't let "reputation" get mixed up with what's within your moral purpose, what's within the power of your will, in other words, what's up to you. Make sure it's in the bottom drawer, filed under "matters of indifference".

And so too with your health, your wealth, your pleasure, your pain, your fame, your disrepute, your life, and your death. They are all externals, all outside your control in the last instance, all outside the power of where you really live. 

And where you really live is confined to the regime of your moral purpose, confined to matters that can be projected by your acts of will—like desires, aims, aversions, judgments, attitudes, and of course, your good and your evil. 

For a Stoic, the moral purpose, the will, is the only repository of things of absolute value. Whether they are projected wisely or foolishly, for good or for evil, is up to you. When his will is set on the right course, a man becomes good; when it's on a foul course, he becomes evil. With the right course comes good luck and happiness, and with the foul course, bad luck and misery. 

—from James B. Stockdale, The Stoic Warrior's Triad 

Dhammapada 141

Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires.

Seneca, Moral Letters 13.7

"But," you say, "something will happen to it." 
 
First of all, consider whether your proofs of future trouble are sure. For it is more often the case that we are troubled by our apprehensions, and that we are mocked by that mocker, rumor, which is wont to settle wars, but much more often settles individuals.
 
Yes, my dear Lucilius; we agree too quickly with what people say. We do not put to the test those things which cause our fear; we do not examine into them; we blench and retreat just like soldiers who are forced to abandon their camp because of a dust-cloud raised by stampeding cattle, or are thrown into a panic by the spreading of some unauthenticated rumor.
 
And somehow or other it is the idle report that disturbs us most. For truth has its own definite boundaries, but that which arises from uncertainty is delivered over to guesswork and the irresponsible license of a frightened mind. That is why no fear is so ruinous and so uncontrollable as panic fear. For other fears are groundless, but this fear is witless.
 
A sense of foreboding is a powerful feeling, even when, or perhaps especially when, the expectation is full of uncertainty. 
 
I am not qualified to make any general claims about psychology, but my own experience has been that the unknown can be far more intimidating than the known. The very fact that I am not sure about what will happen itself becomes a source of terror. 
 
The mind, of course, is made for knowing, and will become restless if its wants are not fulfilled. 
 
Where I do not understand, I will be tempted to engage in crazy speculation, and then pretend as if this can take the place of understanding. It may take the form of superstition, or gossip, or wishful thinking, and I may actually come to believe in deceptions dressed up as answers. 
 
Sometimes, I will find an odd sort of pleasure in claiming to “know” that something bad will occur, much like I can find a perverse comfort in feeling miserable. I am filling in the blanks, however sloppily, since anything seems preferable to the unintelligible. So I end up following my worst instincts, or listen to all of the wrong people. 
 
Once again, some calm and patience are in order. Of all these things I am merely guessing at, is it really necessary for me to know them? Is it even possible for me to know them? 
 
Yes, I should be familiar with my circumstances, and yet I cannot predict them with certainty at all, since I have no immediate power over them. Instead, the first object of my awareness should be my own soul, over which I do have some immediate power. My need for a sure thing has simply been misdirected. 
 
A panic runs ahead of me, only when I have allowed an attention to my own character fall behind. 
 
The captain might not know the state of the ocean for tomorrow, and he is left to rely just on his own seafaring skills to get him through, come what may. 
 
No good can come from listening to the rumors of the crew, who have determined that there is a typhoon ahead, based on the entrails of a chicken they ate for dinner. 

Written in 6/2012

IMAGE: Norman Rockwell, The Gossips (1948)

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 3

Allay the anger of your friend by kindness.

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ 3.33

Of instability of the heart, and of directing the aim towards God

1. "My Son, trust not your feeling, for that which is now will be quickly changed into somewhat else. As long as you live you are subject to change, howsoever unwilling; so that you are found now joyful, now sad; now at peace, now disquieted; now devout, now indevout; now studious, now careless; now sad, now cheerful. But the wise man, and he who is truly learned in spirit, stands above these changeable things, attentive not to what he may feel in himself, or from what quarter the wind may blow, but that the whole intent of his mind may carry him on to the due and much-desired end. For thus will he be able to remain one and the same and unshaken, the single eye of his desire being steadfastly fixed, through the manifold changes of the world, upon Me.

2. "But according as the eye of intention be the more pure, even so will a man make his way steadfastly through the manifold storms. But in many the eye of pure intention waxes dim; for it quickly rests itself upon anything pleasant which occurs, and rarely is any man found altogether free from the blemish of self-seeking. So the Jews of old came to Bethany, to the house of Martha and Mary, that they might see not Jesus, but Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. Therefore must the eye of the intention be cleansed, that it may be single and right, and above all things which come in its way, may be directed unto Me."

IMAGE: Sebastiano del Piombo, The Raising of Lazarus (c. 1518)

Seneca, Moral Letters 13.6

You may retort with the question: "How am I to know whether my sufferings are real or imaginary?" 

 

Here is the rule for such matters: We are tormented either by things present, or by things to come, or by both. 

 

As to things present, the decision is easy. Suppose that your person enjoys freedom and health, and that you do not suffer from any external injury. 

 

As to what may happen to it in the future, we shall see later on. Today there is nothing wrong with it.

 

It is all too easy to get turned around, to end up chasing my own tail, to start questioning my own commitments. In theory, philosophers will ask about epistemological certainty, or how we can know that we know, and this expresses itself just as much in practice, when I begin to doubt that I can ever overcome my doubts. 

 

For being such a profound and radical philosophy, Stoicism is actually an approach grounded in common sense, and never asks me to believe in anything that is not present to my experience. 

 

Some thinkers may wish to doubt away what is self-evident, but the Stoic will have none of that. How I should live, for instance, is not derived from some soaring intellectual construct, but proceeds directly from seeing what I am, which is revealed by reflecting on any of my acts. 

 

To manage my own suffering, I must calmly look at what sort of things are troubling me. Is it happening right now? Then by the power I have in my nature at this very moment, I am able to change my thinking, to recognize that nothing from the outside can force itself upon the value of my own choices. 

 

Is it something that could still come to be? It might, or it just as readily might not, but for right now it is nothing at all. If it does happen to occur, and I am still here to face it, I will still possess the very same tools of judgment I am using at this very moment, no more and no less. 

 

This will still sit badly with some, but I would suggest this is only because we get confused about our priorities. Could I immediately lose my property, or my reputation, or my comforts? Yes, and no amount of worrying will change that situation. Meanwhile, my own attitude presently remains under my control. 

 

Could it happen tomorrow, or in a week, or in a year? Yes, and now I am twice removed from any solution, compounding a handwringing over circumstances beyond me with the agony of wild conjecture. 

 

Let me stick with what I can do, not what is done to me, and with what is actual, not what is merely possible. 

Written in 6/2012

Sayings of Ramakrishna 99

A logician once asked Sri Ramakrishna, "What are knowledge, knower, and the object known?" 

To which he replied, "Good man, I do not know all these niceties of scholastic learning. I know only my Mother Divine, and that I am Her son."

IMAGE: Camille Corot, Mother and Child (c. 1865)

Hans Holbein, The Dance of Death 31: The Knight

Seneca, Moral Letters 13.5

Do me the favor, when men surround you and try to talk you into believing that you are unhappy, to consider not what you hear but what you yourself feel, and to take counsel with your feelings and question yourself independently, because you know your own affairs better than anyone else does. 

 

Ask: "Is there any reason why these persons should condole with me? Why should they be worried or even fear some infection from me, as if troubles could be transmitted? Is there any evil involved, or is it a matter merely of ill report, rather than an evil?" 

 

Put the question voluntarily to yourself: "Am I tormented without sufficient reason, am I morose, and do I convert what is not an evil into what is an evil?”  

 

Sometimes my false imaginings can come from a deeply private place, and sometimes they are urged on by an intense public pressure, but my doubts and fears will fester in me because I am failing to look behind the appearances. 

 

Yet to untangle fantasy from reality seems like an impossible task initially, since the impressions feel so vivid, such that in the heat of the moment I can easily confuse up for down. 

 

I have long searched for some sort of secret formula, only to discover that the remedy is rather mundane: I must slowly step aside from my passions, as if I were placing them right outside myself, and ask whether the danger is in something that came to me, or in something I added to the situation. 

 

If I am being completely honest, I then usually find that most of what I thought was authentic is gently stripped away. I am left with the bare bones of an event that actually happened, and a rather large pile of mental detritus. 

 

When I was little, I would sometimes be certain that something was moving in the shadows around my bed, and turning on the light in the hallway just seemed to give the shadows more substance. 

 

When I was older, I would lie awake for hours, dwelling on someone who had walked away from me, and however much I tried to change the channel in my head, her face would always pop right back up. 

 

But there were no gremlins, and she wasn’t standing there, and while appealing to the calm power of my judgment didn’t make the images go away at first, it did gradually put them in their rightful place as illusions. 

 

When I go out into the world, I come across many people who tell me what I ought to be worried about. They assure me that this threat or that crisis will destroy us all, and that I will only be spared if I take urgent action right now. 

 

They insist that I should be afraid of poverty, or loneliness, or disease, and I have to wonder why they think they know me so well. When I reflect carefully upon myself, it turns out that the best advice I can heed is to beware of my own vices. That is something under my control, and upon which everything else depends. 

 

There is a classic Stoic lesson at work here: do not imagine an evil where none is present. That a circumstance has come or gone is never a good or an evil, and that I am feeling a certain way is not of benefit or of harm, until I have chosen to do something with the experience. I ultimately suffer only as much as I allow myself to suffer. 

Written in 6/2012

IMAGE: Auguste Toulmouche, The Lost Love (c. 1870)

 

Times of the Day

Caspar David Friedrich, Morning / Noon / Afternoon / Evening (c. 1822)

Stoic Snippets 87

The best way of avenging yourself is not to become like the wrongdoer.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.6

Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 15

XV.

With men 'tis usual, when depriv'd of ought
Which with much pleasure entertain'd the thought,
To say, that such a thing they've lost: In you,
Who the great search of wisdom do pursue,
To say, You've lost, is mean; say you've restor'd
What bounteous God did for a while afford.
Thy only son, thy dearest hope is dead;
Why do'st thou beat thy breast, and shake thy head?
Why man? He's but restor'd, return'd again,
To the kind owner's hand from whence he came.
Thou'st lost thy land by fraud? a vain mistake?
How is that loss that is but given back?
But he that thus deceiv'd me, was not he
A villain, and a knave? What's that to thee?
What is't to thee? Is he a knave or no
By whom he takes who did the gift bestow;
Was't not his own? Thou'lt grant me, I suppose,
To whom he would, he might of's own dispose.
While he allows, use what belongs to him,
Not as thy own, as travellers their inn.
Who, as at home, are treated while they pay,
But claim no title longer than they stay.

Seneca, Moral Letters 13.4

The first of these three faults may be postponed for the present, because the subject is under discussion and the case is still in court, so to speak. 

 

That which I should call trifling, you will maintain to be most serious; for of course I know that some men laugh while being flogged, and that others wince at a box on the ear. 

 

We shall consider later whether these evils derive their power from their own strength, or from our own weakness.

 

Seneca passes over a closer discussion of exaggerated suffering, and I suspect that he does so because we will all have to come to terms with it in our own distinct ways. Yes, there will always be such a thing as making too much of something, and yet where the line must be drawn has much to do with our particular dispositions, experiences, and habits. 

 

Much how Aristotle observed that the mean of virtue is universally the same for everyone, while its application is accidental to our relative circumstances, the degrees of pain, fear, or loss that we are willing or able to bear will depend upon the ways in which our attitudes have been shaped. Where you stand at this moment will not necessarily be where I stand at this moment, and no personality will be magically modified in an instant. 

 

“I don’t know why you’re crying! I’ve gone through much worse, and you don’t see me breaking down!” 

 

Now I can’t imagine that words like that have ever achieved anything, beyond feelings of discouragement and shame. We all have to bear our crosses differently. Wherever we find weakness, it is best to be lifting up instead of beating down.

 

This hardly excuses me from working to become braver and stronger, but it does require me to treat both myself and others with a realistic respect. Neither Rome nor the Stoic was built in a day. 

 

My family has a long tradition of watching professional soccer games together, and beyond defending our various tribal loyalties, one of our favorite pastimes involves bemoaning the constant flopping among the players. The only problem, however, is that with so much exaggerated agony, it’s quite hard to tell if there has actually been a serious injury. It might look much the same from the outside, even as it could feel very different on the inside. 

 

In real life, the lesson might be that I should be giving the benefit of the doubt. I have learned, for example, that thresholds for pain, and how we express such pain, can vary wildly. It it best to help instead of hinder, and to understand that, whether the threat is too strong or the will is too weak, the formation of character is the only remedy. 

Written in 6/2012

Vanitas 42

Anonymous, Vanitas Still Life (1650)

Dhammapada 137-140

He who inflicts pain on innocent and harmless persons, will soon come to one of these ten states:

He will have cruel suffering, loss, injury of the body, heavy affliction, or loss of mind,

Or a misfortune coming from the king, or a fearful accusation, or loss of relations, or destruction of treasures,

Or lightning-fire will burn his houses; and when his body is destroyed, the fool will go to hell.

 

Seneca, Moral Letters 13.3

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. 

 

I am not speaking with you in the Stoic strain but in my milder style. For it is our Stoic fashion to speak of all those things, which provoke cries and groans, as unimportant and beneath notice; but you and I must drop such great-sounding words, although, Heaven knows, they are true enough. 

 

What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come.

 

Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.

 

When someone tells me that my worries are in my head, I may be tempted to think that he is diminishing how I feel, and yet he may not be brushing aside my concerns at all, but rather reminding me how I have it within my power to tame them. As real as the trouble seems to me, whatever arose out of my own judgments can also be put right back in its place by my own judgments. 

 

If I am honest with myself, I will indeed discover that the danger is more often in my estimations than in the circumstances, that the threat is something of my own making. What I can’t see will terrify me over what I can see, what is possible will haunt me instead of what is actual. 

 

Even as I have been pondering Stoicism for some time, and working daily to put those principles into practice, I have moments where I still find myself deeply discouraged, assuming that the goal of such inner peace is too far beyond my reach.

 

Some of that has to do with the weight of my old habits, though I must also admit that the noble and lofty style of the philosophers, what Seneca here calls the “Stoic fashion”, can rub me the wrong way, depending upon the state of my mood.

 

That need not be an obstacle, however, since the same message can be made more palatable by leaving aside the grand rhetoric, for the moment, and focusing in on a much more comfortable scale. Let me start by taking smaller bites. 

 

Instead of boldly saying that all fears and pains are insignificant, I can just recognize how easily I am making mountains out of molehills, how a frustration I see before me, right here and now, is not so big after all. It doesn’t have to be about the burdens of mortality, or the fight for a deeper justice, or the quest for ultimate meaning; it can be about the nagging anxieties that slow me down during my day. 

 

I observe that I am regularly fretting over something that hasn’t happened yet, and even over something that shows no real sign of ever happening at all. It is idle speculation that is bringing me down. When I consider only what is immediately in front of me, I tend to magnify it out of proportion, or add all sorts of associations coming from my vivid imagination, which have more to do with my baggage than with the matter at hand. 

 

Seneca sums it up nicely: I foolishly choose to distort what is, to obsess with what isn’t, and to shudder at what might be. 

Written in 6/2012