Live Laugh Love

 

When I worked at Barnes & Noble, a customer once asked if I could show her the self-help section.  I asked if that didn’t defeat the purpose.  True story.

 

Self-improvement advice is everywhere.  From online articles to entire sections in bookstores, quotes on throw pillows, Ted talks, YouTube videos, and weird lawyers blogging when they just discovered a cool philosophy.  There are self-help and self-improvement gurus everywhere.  But quite frequently the focus is on how to become more successful or learn techniques to get what you want.  The improvement being sold is still focused on bending the environment to our wishes.  Stoicism is different.

When Epictetus was asked how a person could improve relations with a brother, he replied “Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside of our control.”  He further felt that a desire to have one’s wishes fulfilled, regardless of the reasons behind them was madness and insanity.  Put simply, stoic philosophy is not a magic way to get what you want and you should be cautious about what you want anyway.  To Epictetus, the true purpose of becoming educated was to align ones wants and desires with the natural world, not the other way around.  To study philosophy was indeed a path to happiness and contentment but not by learning to become powerful or successful.

Epictetus was a slave with a damaged leg.  Marcus Aurelius was an emperor and side character in the movie “Gladiator.”  The stoics were very well aware that people were given different circumstances.  What they disputed was that this would cause one to be happy and the other to be desolate.  Their situations were not of their making and outside their control.  This is true for everybody.  The question thus is not what your situation is but rather how you respond to it.

Stoicism is about improving the self.  But the self has to understand that wanting something does not mean you should have it or that it is within your reach.  So the goal is to moderate your wants.  Stoics are not ascetic.  Having stuff is not bad.  Despairing because you don’t is. 

This is hard.  At times society seems to condition us to see what others have and want it.  Or view obstacles in our way as insurmountable.  Both are frustrating.  The stoic path requires us to rewire our thought processes.  As Epictetus said, we need education.  A pretty sign in the family room will not do.

Epictetus, Esq