If it was easy, everybody would do it

 

Stoic philosophy is deceptively simple: focus on what you can control, view your emotions as reactions to situations and evaluate them to see if your impressions are rational, bring your desires in line with the rational universe.

Except that none of this is easy. 

Imagine yourself in your professional life.  I am a lawyer who is heavily involved in motion practice and advocacy.  This means I need to know and understand the underlying law, the court’s rules, and methods of persuasion.  A teacher needs to know the subject matter and different educational theories and practices.  A surgeon needs to understand anatomy and be aware on how to access and repair different parts of the body.  Everybody’s knowledge and skill is learned and honed over a long period of time.  And we all can fail.

After significant preparation, I can still lose a hearing.  After preparing an amazing lesson plan, a teacher can still encounter a student who is disruptive and does not respond to the usual techniques.  Even without making mistakes, a surgeon can fail to remove a tumor or repair damage.  These are not failures, this is life.  It is also immensely frustrating.  Being angry, irritated, frustrated, or even sad or depressed when you see a project of yours not succeed is normal.  And yet, stoicism teaches that these emotions or impressions are not reasonable. 

A stoic sage wants you to evaluate your reaction through the prism of reason.  The judge’s ruling was ultimately outside my control.  The disruptive student might be dealing with an unfortunate homelife, triggering his problems.  The patient might have an undiagnosed issue that caused the surgery to fail.  In every scenario, a strong reaction to forces outside your control is causing your feelings.  These reactions are not rational.  Bringing your feelings into line with reason is going to help.  But this is hard.

The Stoics do not expect one throw pillow quote to change your life.  Epictetus made it abundantly clear in his discourses that learning how to use stoicism to live a happy virtuous life takes time and effort.  It is a learning process in which you try to use reason and logic to adjust your impressions and reactions.  Time and time again you have to check yourself and analyze your emotions and apply stoic reasoning to them.  In fact, learning stoic philosophy is like learning your profession.  It took time and effort to learn the law, to become an educator or doctor.  Learning proper thinking is no different and the stoics expect it to take time.

And in time you will see that it is your reaction to hardship that creates opportunities.  Epictetus effectively said that without his twelve labors, Heracles was merely a nice but unknown guy.  It was his adversity and reaction thereof that caused his fame.  Once you learn to react according to reason, you give yourself the opportunity to grow.  Losing a hearing might give me the opportunity to appeal and create meaningful change.  The teacher, having to deal with the student individually can now give targeted help and improve an entire family.  The surgeon can now address underlying issues that otherwise might have gone undetected.

But none of this is easy.  Stoicism is not about finding the easy approach.  Stoicism is about learning the correct approach: using reason and logic to bring yourself into alignment with reality – but not just accepting what is, using obstacles to make changes and improving yourself and the world around you.

Epictetus, Esq

UPDATE: /u/victorian_bullfrog said the following (and is correct):

I like your writing style, but I disagree with this part:

A stoic sage wants you to evaluate your reaction through the prism of reason. The judge’s ruling was ultimately outside my control. The disruptive student might be dealing with an unfortunate homelife, triggering his problems. The patient might have an undiagnosed issue that caused the surgery to fail. In every scenario, a strong reaction to forces outside your control is causing your feelings. These reactions are not rational. Bringing your feelings into line with reason is going to help. But this is hard.

I disagree with the conclusion that feelings are caused by not recognizing things are out of our control. Rather, the Stoics argued negative emotions are caused by erroneous judgments, particularly, judgments of good and bad. The judge's ruling was ultimately outside your control, but the ruling itself is not necessary for you to be a wise and good person, therefore is indifferent to that goal. The disruptive student might be dealing with an unfortunate home lif, but that student's disruption is not an obstacle for the teacher to being a wise and good person, therefore it is indifferent to that goal. The patient might have an undiagnosed issue that caused the surgery to fail, but the surgery itself is not necessary for the surgeon to be a wise and good person, therefore it is indifferent to that goal.

Consider how Epictetus explains the source of our negative emotions here:

For this is the cause to men of all their evils, the not being able to adapt the general preconceptions to the several things. But we have different opinions (about the cause of our evils). One man thinks that he is sick: not so however, but the fact is that he does not adapt his preconceptions right. Another thinks that he is poor; another that he has a severe father or mother; and another again that Caesar is not favourable to him. But all this is one and only one thing, the not knowing how to adapt the preconceptions. For who has not a preconception of that which is bad, that it is hurtful, that it ought to be avoided, that it ought in every way to be guarded against?

Discourses 4.1, About freedom.

The lawyer is upset because they hold the preconception that a favorable ruling is good, and therefore an unfavorable one is bad, and so the bad option is one to avoid. When it can't be avoided, the lawyer experiences any number of negative emotions. Reminding themselves that the ruling is out of their control doesn't address the erroneous belief, and erroneous beliefs are understood to be the instigator of negative emotions, not convincing ourselves we don't care about things we value, or worse, to devalue things that are important to us because we can't control them.

I'm thinking out loud here and this isn't directed at you at all, but I wonder how attractive the concept of having, or being in control is particularly for people living in western cultures, and especially hyper-individualistic cultures like the USA. I wonder if people in collectivist cultures have the same drive to feel in control of things. I say this because I've been reading Robert Sapolsky's book Behave and he attributes many many variables to our behavior, including ancient cultural mores, like collectivism or individualism. I'd be curious to hear what others think about that, but I just don't see this notion in the Stoic texts myself. I don't pretend to be very knowledgeable about them, but I can't help but wonder if 21st century westerners aren't reading this concept into the text because it seems like such a normal part of reality without recognizing this is a learned belief.

This article might help clear up some of the confusion, perhaps in part caused by an unfortunate translation of eph’ ēmin to "control":

What Many People Misunderstand about the Stoic Dichotomy of Control by Michael Tremblay