As William B. Irvine points out in his recent book, The Stoic Challenge, another unexpected benefit of practicing the premeditation of adversity is that it helps someone overcome hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation happens when you buy a shiny new object that delights you, but over time you adapt to it and the pleasure of owning it wears off. You might even take it for granted. Seneca, being the keen psychologist he was, described this common experience several times in his writings: “Don’t you see,” he asked, “that everything loses its force once it becomes familiar?”18
Having lived in my house for over five years now, I’m not nearly as excited about the place today as when I first bought it. But if I practice the premeditation of adversity and imagine it being destroyed by a fire or by an earthquake, it makes me once again feel grateful for something I might otherwise take for granted. Similarly, the Stoics recommend that we regularly remind ourselves that our closest family members and friends will one day die, perhaps even tomorrow. Not only is this a fact of nature, but reflecting on it will also help us reduce the emotional shock when they do leave us. But in a positive sense, it encourages us not to take them for granted in the present moment, and to be grateful each day for the time we still have together.
TESTED BY THE UNIVERSE: ADVERSITY AS TRAINING
While Seneca believed that nothing terrible could happen to the inner character of a wise person (see chapter 10), it’s a law of nature that everyone will experience adversities. In the Stoic view, however, these adversities are sent to us by “God” or “the universe” as “training exercises,” to test us and help us develop our character. (While Seneca uses the term God like other Stoics, it’s essential to know that the Stoic idea doesn’t correspond to the Christian concept of God. The Stoic notion refers to a kind of intelligence present in nature, which they would call God, Nature, Fate, Zeus, the universe, and many other terms interchangeably. In this book, I use the term “the universe,” when possible, to avoid any confusion with the Judeo-Christian idea of God.)
Seneca wrote that while “fire tests gold, adversity tests brave men.”19 Significantly, he wrote an entire work, On Providence, about how the universe sends us “tests” so we can develop better characters. As Seneca quoted his old friend Demetrius as saying, “No one seems more unhappy to me than someone who has never faced adversity.” The reason why, Seneca explains, is because “such a person has never been able to test himself.”20
In fact, Seneca emphasizes that a person can never be sure of his strength of character until it is tested: “To have nothing that inspires you, to have nothing that challenges you to take action, to have nothing to test the strength of your mind against—that is not the peace offered by tranquility. It is merely floating becalmed, on top of a dead sea.”21 As he writes elsewhere, the universe is like a father who gives his children a bit of tough love. Only by being stirred up by labors, pains, and losses can we become genuinely robust as human beings. Conversely, “Unimpaired good fortune cannot withstand a single blow.”22
For Seneca, one of the worst things that could happen to anyone would be to lead a life of extreme pleasure and ease, without having one’s character tested. After Seneca, Epictetus used almost identical language. “It is difficulties that reveal a person’s character,” he wrote. So whenever someone faces adversity, it’s like a gymnastic trainer has “matched you against a powerful, young opponent.” When someone asked Epictetus why this takes place, he replied, “So that you might become an Olympic champion; and that’s something that can never be achieved without some sweat.”23
TRANSFORMING ADVERSITY
No matter what Fortune sends his way, the wise person will transform it into something admirable.
—Seneca, Letters 85.40
One of the most inspiring things about Roman Stoicism is how the Stoics believed something good can always come out of an adverse situation. As Seneca wrote, “Disaster is virtue’s opportunity.”24 Even the worst misfortune allows us to respond in a virtuous way.
As Seneca explained, regardless of what happens, we must find the good in it, and transform the situation to good. In this way, “It’s not what you face, but how you face it that matters.”25
In the real world, our lives are full of failure. Sometimes, whether in business or love, our best-laid plans just don’t work out. Within the first ten years, most small businesses go under. Marriages fail. People lose their jobs, often through no fault of their own. The important thing for a Stoic is to understand that it’s just a fact of nature that our plans or objectives will sometimes fail. And when those failures occur, it’s our responsibility to learn from them, respond to them with virtue, or turn failure into some other kind of opportunity.
For example, for many years, I ran a small book publishing company that was barely profitable most years. But the skills I learned from running that company allowed me to start an editorial and book design company, which has allowed me to work for some of the most highly regarded publishers in the world. It also allowed me to research and write this book.
Seneca said that a wise Stoic resembles a skilled animal trainer, like a lion tamer. In its natural state, a lion might be fierce, dangerous, and terrifying. But under the influence of a good trainer, a ferocious lion can become a gentle companion, even allowing the trainer to kiss the lion, hug it, and slide his arm between the lion’s deadly jaws. For Seneca, the way a Stoic tames adversity exactly resembles the work of the animal handler: “Similarly, the wise person is a skilled expert at taming misfortune. Pain, poverty, disgrace, imprisonment, and exile are feared by everyone. But when they encounter the wise person, they are tamed.”26
No one is in control of the circumstances we are given in life, but the Stoic takes whatever situation is at hand and makes use of it, transforming it into something valuable. “Whatever might happen,” wrote Epictetus, “it’s within my power to derive some benefit from it.”27
In this way, the Stoic aims to make good use of whatever life, or the present moment, happens to offer. As Marcus Aurelius explains, if something negative happens to us, we can “use the setback to employ another virtue.”28 Or as Seneca writes, whatever is bad, the Stoic “turns into good.”29
Ryan Holiday took this Stoic idea from the writings of Marcus Aurelius and transformed it into the memorable title of his book, The Obstacle Is the Way (2014). Marcus Aurelius inspired that title, almost twenty centuries later, with this reminder to himself, which he wrote in his Stoic notebook:
Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.30
As we can see from these passages, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—the major Roman Stoics—were in full agreement about the value of transforming adversity into something better. More importantly, as they show, no matter what might happen to us, we can always respond in a way that brings goodness into the world.
*For Seneca, Fortune was akin to being a cosmic power, so I often capitalize it in this book, along with other Stoic terms that refer to cosmic powers such as Nature, Fate, and Logos (reason or rationality).