Again, it’s enlightening to consider the double standard between the things you desire for yourself and the things you find admirable in others. Many people find the suggestion that they should abandon certain pleasures almost shocking at first. However, the same people often praise and admire others who exercise endurance or self-control and forgo certain pleasures for the sake of wisdom and virtue. Epictetus used Socratic questioning to highlight this sort of contradiction, hidden from view in people’s underlying values. Really seeing that two beliefs are incompatible can weaken one or both of them and help you clarify your core values. The two-column technique that involves listing the things you typically desire in your own life and comparing them to qualities you admire in other people can highlight inconsistencies between the two perspectives. What would happen if you started to desire more of the traits you admire in other people? For example, suppose you replaced your desire to eat chocolate assuming you had one, with the desire to be a fairly self-disciplined person and make healthy choices more consistently? For Stoics the supreme goal is always virtue rather than pleasure. However, healthy pleasures and even a deeper sense of joy may follow as the consequence of living in accord with virtue. ADD HEALTHIER SOURCES OF JOY
We saw earlier that Marcus mentions three sources of rational joy. The first and most important is the joy that Stoics experience by glimpsing their own progress toward wisdom and virtue, and thereby fulfilling their potential in life. In addition to replacing unhealthy habits with more intrinsically valuable activities, you can schedule beneficial activities every day. For example, you might set aside ten minutes each day to write stories for your children. While that might not replace a bad habit, it does introduce a good one, if that’s something that gives you a sense of fulfillment. It’s like setting aside time each day to exercise the Stoic virtues and become more like the people you admire.
What about the joy Marcus says we can obtain by contemplating the virtue of others? That’s related to what we’ve been saying about modeling the attitudes and behavior of others. You might want to set aside time to write down a description of the qualities you most admire in other people, as Marcus does in book 1 of The Meditations, or visualize them in your mind’s eye. Contemplating the virtues of people who are close to you may have the added benefit of helping to improve your relationship with them. Also, how does thinking about the qualities you admire in others affect you, and how might you learn and benefit from this experience?
Finally, remember what Marcus said about feeling gratitude instead of desire. In a sense, to desire something is to imagine having what you don’t have, the presence of something that’s absent. Gratitude, on the other hand, comes from imagining the absence of things that are currently present: What would it be like if you didn’t have this? If we don’t occasionally picture loss, reminding ourselves what life might be like without the things and people we love, we would take them for granted. Keep a journal of people and things that you’re grateful for, perhaps also focusing on what you can learn from them. As Marcus says, though, it’s important to do this in such a way that you don’t end up becoming overly attached to external things. Stoics try to avoid that by reminding themselves that external things, and other people, are not entirely under our control, and one day they will be gone. The wise man is grateful for the gifts life has given him, but he also reminds himself that they are merely on loan—everything changes and nothing lasts forever. Epictetus told his Stoic students to imagine they’re guests at a banquet being handed a sharing plate, not greedily holding on to it and scoffing the lot but politely taking an appropriate share and then handing the rest along. That’s how Stoics think about life in generaclass="underline" they aim to be grateful for external things without becoming overly attached to them.
We’ve now seen how the Stoics aspired to find happiness in healthy ways, through gratitude for the things they have, admiration for the strengths of others, or pride in their own ability to act with dignity, honor, and integrity. Also, remember that for Stoics ordinary pleasure and pain aren’t good or bad but merely indifferent. Their main concern is to avoid becoming hedonistic by placing too much value on physical pleasures, indulging in them, and craving them excessively. A preference, or “light” desire, for pleasurable things and avoiding pain and discomfort is natural for Stoics, within reasonable bounds.
We can apply some of the guidance they left us about how to master our desires today using the framework I described. Evaluate certain habits or desires rationally in terms of their consequences. Write down the long-term pros and cons of indulging in the habit versus overcoming it. Close your eyes and visualize a fork in the road representing two paths, picturing as vividly as you can first the future with unhealthy passions, then the future with wise actions in accord with reason. You can adapt the daily routine mentioned earlier to look like this:
1. Morning Meditation. Think of the rising sun, the stars, and your small space within the whole cosmos. Mentally rehearse the key events of the day, imagining how Socrates, Zeno, Marcus Aurelius, or your own role model would cope with habits or desires. Picture how you plan to cope with any challenges and what inner resources or virtues you can employ.
2. During the Day. Practice Stoic mindfulness by looking for early warning signs of the habits or desires you want to overcome. Try to catch them early and nip them in the bud. Pause and practice accepting any feelings of unease with Stoic indifference. Gain cognitive distance from your thoughts and refrain from acting on your feelings. Engage in healthy substitute behaviors instead, which contribute to a genuine sense of fulfillment. You could also keep a written log or tally of certain habits, as described in this chapter.
3. Evening Meditation. At the end of the day, review how well you fared in terms of acting in accordance with your values—that is, virtues. In relation to desires, consider what you did well, what you did badly, and what you could do differently tomorrow. If it helps, imagine answering these questions before a wise Stoic mentor or even a panel of Sages, and consider what advice they might give you. Use what you learn to help prepare for the next day’s morning meditation.
As we’ll see in the following chapters, you can adapt this basic Stoic routine, and some of the same techniques, to help you cope with other challenges in life, such as pain, anxiety, and anger. You’ll therefore be learning to use similar techniques, but in a slightly different way.
5. GRASPING THE NETTLE
Marcus Aurelius was known for his physical frailty, due to chronic health problems, but he was also known for his exceptional resilience. For instance, the historian Cassius Dio wrote:
To be sure, he could not display many feats of physical prowess; yet he had developed his body from a very weak one to one capable of the greatest endurance.1