By Steve Christenson
Welcome back to the Origins of Happiness blog series! It's been a quick minute since the last time I've been able to post, so here's a refresher on the purpose of the series. So many of us are chasing after happiness day to day, but that isn't anything different than what our ancestors were doing centuries or even millennia ago. The difference between them and us? While we have YouTube, self-help coaches, personal trainers, and therapists, they had none of that. Instead, they had the training and ideas of philosophy, many of which undergird the mental health and physical wellness services we use today!
This is a series digging into the philosophies that define positive psychology. We tell you about who these philosophers were, what they did that was so important, and how you can practice their teachings to find a greater sense of well-being in your own life. In our first post, we addressed the Taoist idea of Wu Wei—the art of doing nothing (you can check it out here if you missed it!). This month we will address the topic that made me interested in philosophy in the first place: the Stoics and the Stoic perspective.
2020: A Golden Age?
For all of us here on spaceship Earth, this has been a pretty insane year. The economy is swinging nearly as badly as it did during the Great Depression. People are losing their homes to foreclosure while others are losing their loved ones to disease. We've seen panics—mad rushes for essential goods like cleaning supplies and toilet paper. At the same time, we’ve been living through terrorist attacks, political turmoil, race riots, police brutality, and a dreadful sense that life will never return to normal. Even the highest world offices aren't immune to the symptoms of disease and fear that have gripped the nation and the world. But what if I told you that this had all happened before? That nearly two thousand years ago, the world went through the exact same thing.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius
Historians call it the Antonine Plagues, a series of COVID-19 style pandemics of smallpox that shocked the Roman Empire to its core. The disease was delivered from Western China along the Silk Road, then brought to Rome by the soldiers in the East. It's almost eerie how similar their pandemic was to ours. For starters, the Roman economy shut down as people ceased trading for fear of becoming sick. The military, weakened by protracted conflicts in the Near East, had difficulty dealing with what we might consider "terrorist actions" by German and Celtic tribes. This led to a significant problem in the entertainment industry when gladiators were recruited by the Emperor to fill the void in the military—right when Romans wanted more entertainment, not less. Finally, the political structures of the Empire were devastated when Lucius Verus, one of the two Emperors, died from the disease.
Despite all that, though, that same period was known as the "Golden Age" of Rome. Why? In large part, it was the "Golden Age" because of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his practice of Stoic philosophy.
What is Stoicism?
Ryan Holiday, bestselling author and media strategist, probably gives the best overview of the basic theory and purpose of Stoicism in this three-minute video:
I love that video because it emphasizes two essential things. First, it discusses the quote from Marcus Aurelius that lies at the center of Stoic ideology: Objective judgement, unselfish action, and willing acceptance of external events in the present moment. I also like how Ryan unpacks this into the three tenants of perception, action, and will. I could spend hours talking about each of these points (and Stoic ideas will undoubtedly come up again in the blog series), but for now I want to focus on the Stoic practice of perspective that is at the core of having our own personal "Golden Age" in the midst the mess of the past year.
Finding the "Why" Through the Stoic Perspective
When the pandemic was at its worst—when his wife, son, and brother were all sick back in Rome—Marcus Aurelius found himself battling bad weather and German tribes along the Rhine River. What kept him in good humor through those trials is the same thing that can keep our spirits up now: taking the right perspective. In his personal journal, Marcus wrote:
"There are two ideas you should keep at the very front of your mind and think about. One is that things in the world do not touch your spirit, but stand quietly external to it; that which disturbs us comes only from the opinions within us. Second, everything you see changes in a moment and will soon be gone. Keep in mind always how many of these changes you have seen. The world is constant change; your life lies in your opinion."
That last line is the clincher for how Stoics suggests we ought to view the world. They observe that we all spend too much time trying to change things that we have no direct control over—the events they call "externals." For example, a worker angling for that next promotion spends all his time trying to look good in front of the boss (think of Dwight from The Office). The Stoics don't necessarily view the activities themselves as "wrong," per se. Still, they do see them as being misdirected and ultimately leading to emotional instability. For all the hours of anger and frustration invested, that family vacation may not pan out, nor will that date with the cute girl in your chemistry class. And Dwight may never get the promotion or the credit no matter how much butt-kissing or worry he invests into his ambition. Why? Because these events are wholly controlled by other people; the decision is not within us nor within our reach.
Instead, the Stoics suggest we should focus on our “internals,” the events in our lives over which we have complete control—namely our actions and our emotions. Instead of worrying about who will get that promotion, we can shift our focus to meeting our own rigid work standards and achieving our own goals. Instead of worrying if that girl in chemistry or that guy in history likes you, we can focus on being an attractive person ourselves and developing our own personality traits. Instead of investing so much anger and frustration in a canceled vacation, we can observe that our time is short in the grand scheme of things. We can build memories in much simpler ways than a trip to some amusement park (and our small investments of time at home will ultimately be more fulfilling than some grand gesture anyway).
Notice that in each of these examples, the individual in question found peace and meaning by shifting their focus away from something they couldn't control and towards something that they could control—or at least recognized their true priorities in the grand scheme of things. This is what the Stoics mean when they tell us to change perspective. As Ward Farnsworth noted in his work The Practicing Stoic:
"By seeing how small our affairs look in the larger scheme of things, the Stoic means to induce a felt sense of humility and attraction to virtue… The long view is good for morale. If it is an affront to the ego, it is also an antidote to vanity, ambition, and greed. Our ultimate insignificance makes the case for living well in the present, for no other purpose survives. It also suggests the value of viewing oneself as part of a whole."
On that note, here's a practice discussed in Farnsworth’s book that you can start using today that can give you a new view of life in the midst of a pandemic:
Practice: Change the Time Scale
Foundation: "Imagine the vast abyss of time and think of the entire universe; then compare what we call a human lifetime to that immensity. You will see how tiny a thing it is that we wish for and seek to prolong."
Description: This is a thought exercise that you can use when problems crop up in your life, especially issues that seem overwhelming at the moment. Begin by focusing on the subject that is causing you stress, anger, or frustration, and ask yourself:
How big of a problem will this be for me ten years from now? Will it even matter? Will I still be feeling hurt or rejected or frustrated because of this one event?
Will this event be a problem for me 50 years from now? How about 100 years? Will it have any effect on the lives of my children or their descendants? Or on my siblings and theirs?
Will being angry or frustrated or hurt change what happened in the grand scheme of things?
Ultimately, this practice should lead you to feel that your problems at the moment are insignificant. That's a good thing! It can lead to feeling calm and collected and making more rational decisions to solving your problems than you otherwise would. This can also help de-escalate heated conversations; in the grand scheme of things, does it matter who is right or wrong? Will this relationship matter more in the future than it matters to be right?
If you liked this practice and want to find more like it, check out our modules on Compassion and Self-Compassion. If you want to learn more about the Stoics or find other cool Stoic practices that you can incorporate into your own life, check out our mini-module on Joyful Stoicism. Finally, keep an eye out for our next Origins of Happiness blog post for our dive into the "Philosophy of Doubt," and how doubts can be the catalyst for better decision making!