Tag Archives: Clarity

Arts, Literature, Philosophy

The Stoic: Cut The Strings That Pull Your Mind

CLARITY

“Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that?” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.19

THINK of all the interests vying for a share of your wallet or for a second of your attention. Food scientists are engineering products to exploit your taste buds, Silicon Valley engineers are designing applications as addictive as gambling. The media is manufacturing stories to provoke outrage and anger.

These are just a small slice of the temptations and forces acting on us – distracting us and pulling us away from the things that truly matter. Aurelius, thankfully, was not exposed to these extreme parts of our modern culture. But he knew plenty of distracting sinkholes too: gossip, the endless call for keeping up to date and betterment, as well as fear, suspicion, lust. Every human being is pulled by these internal and external forces that are increasingly more powerful and harder to resist.

Philosophy is simply asking us to pay careful attention and to strive to be more than a pawn. As Viktor Frankl puts it in The Will to Meaning, “man is pushed by drives put pulled by values.” These values and inner awareness prevent us from being puppets. Sure, paying attention requires work and awareness, but isn’t that better than being jerked about on a string?

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Arts, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry

The Stoic: ‘Steady’ or ‘Unsteady’

CLARITY

THIS article incorporates a poem dedicated by my friend Jan Smith from Liverpool. You will find the poem, entitled “Be Kind”, roughly at the mid-point of this entry. I thank Jan for allowing me to use and share her work on my site. She can be found on Twitter: @JanSmithNL

IF YOU WANT TO BE STEADY

“The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material that are straight makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 1.29.1–3

THE Stoics seek steadiness, stability, and tranquility – traits most of us aspire to but seem to experience only fleetingly. How do they accomplish this elusive goal? How does one embody eustatheia (the word Arrian once used to describe this teaching of Epictetus)?

Well, it’s not luck. It’s not by eliminating outside influences or running away to quiet and solitude. Instead, it’s about filtering the outside world through the straightener of our judgment. That’s what our reason can do – it can take the crooked, confusing, and overwhelming nature of external events and make them orderly.

However, if our judgments are crooked because we don’t apply reason, then everything that follows will be crooked, and we will lose our ability to steady ourselves in the chaos and rush of life. If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way.

IF YOU WANT TO BE UNSTEADY

“For if a person shifts their caution to their own reasoned choices and the acts of those choices, they will at the same time gain the will to avoid, but if they shift their caution away from their own reasoned choices to things not under their control, seeking to avoid what is controlled by others, they will then be agitated, fearful, and unstable.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 2.1.12

THE image of the Zen philosopher is the monk up in the green, quiet hills, or in a beautiful temple on some rocky cliff. The Stoics are the antithesis of this idea. Instead, they are the man in the marketplace, the senator in the Forum, the brave wife waiting for her soldier to return from battle, the sculptor busy in her studio. Still, the Stoic is equally at peace.

Epictetus is reminding you that serenity and stability are results of your choices and judgment, not your environment. If you seek to avoid all disruptions to tranquility – other people, external events, stress – you will never be successful. Your problems will follow you wherever you run and hide. But if you seek to avoid the harmful and disruptive judgments that cause those problems, then you will be stable and steady whatever and wherever you happen to be.

Creative Writing

See also:

. The Stoic: The Power of a Mantra

. The Stoic: Be Ruthless To The Things That Don’t Matter

. The Stoic: Control & Choice

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Arts, Literature, Philosophy

The Stoic: Control & Choice

CLARITY

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5

The Pen

A metonymic adage, coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839.

THE single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather – no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at those immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change.

The recovery community practices something called the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future – through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus said, they can control the choices they make right now.

The same is true for us today. If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realise they are fighting an unwinnable battle.

– The Stoic is a new series on site which aims to interpret powerful quotations and historical anecdotes through personal commentary.

Appendage:

stoicism

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