I do my best to turn them to my advantage: They make me focus on the race that lies ahead. Once a race has begun, I have the pleasure of watching the butterflies depart.
I have also turned elsewhere in my pursuit of butterflies.After I began practicing Stoicism, for example, I decided to learn how to play a musical instrument, something I had never done before. The instrument I chose was the banjo.
After several months of lessons, my teacher asked if I wanted to participate in the recital his students give. I initially rejected the offer; it sounded like no fun at all to risk public humiliation trying to play banjo in front of a bunch of strangers. But then it occurred to me that this was a wonderful opportunity to cause myself psychological discomfort and to confront—and hopefully vanquish—my fear of failing. I agreed to take part.
The recital was the most stress-inducing event I had experienced in a long time. It isn’t that I have a fear of crowds; I can, with zero anxiety, walk into a classroom of sixty students I have never met and start lecturing them. But this was different.
Before my performance, I experienced butterflies the size of small bats. Not only that, but I also slipped into an altered state of consciousness in which time was distorted and the laws of physics seemed to stop working. But to make a long story short, I survived the recital.
The butterflies I experience racing in a regatta or giving a banjo recital are, of course, a symptom of anxiety, and it might seem contrary to Stoic principles to go out of my way to cause myself anxiety. Indeed, if a goal of Stoicism is the attainment of tranquility, shouldn’t I go out of my way to avoid anxiety-inducing activities? Shouldn’t I, rather than collecting butterflies, flee from them? Not at all. In causing myself anxiety by, for example, giving a banjo recital, I have precluded much future anxiety in my life.
Now, when faced with a new challenge, I have a wonderful bit of reasoning I can use: “Compared to the banjo recital, this new challenge is nothing. I survived that challenge, so surely I will survive this one.” By taking part in the recital, in other words, I immunized myself against a fair amount of future anxiety. It is an immunization, though, that will wear off with the passage of time, and I will need to be reimmunized with another dose of butterflies.
Wh e n d o i n g t h i n g s to cause myself physical and mental discomfort, I view myself—or at any rate, a part of me—as an opponent in a kind of game. This opponent—my “other self,” as it were—is on evolutionary autopilot: He wants nothing more than to be comfortable and to take advantage of whatever opportunities for pleasure present themselves. My other self lacks self- discipline; left to his own devices, he will always take the path of least resistance through life and as a result will be little more than a simple-minded pleasure seeker. He is also a coward. My other self is not my friend; to the contrary, he is best regarded, in the words of Epictetus, “as an enemy lying in wait.”4
To win points in the contest with my other self, I must establish my dominance over him. To do this, I must cause him to experience discomfort he could easily have avoided, and I must prevent him from experiencing pleasures he might otherwise have enjoyed. When he is scared of doing something, I must force him to confront his fears and overcome them.
Why play this game against my other self ? In part to gain self-discipline. And why is self-discipline worth possessing? Because those who possess it have the ability to determine what they do with their life. Those who lack self-discipline will have the path they take through life determined by someone or something else, and as a result, there is a very real danger that they will mislive.
Playing the game against my other self also helps me build character. These days, I realize, people smirk at talk of building character, but it is an activity that the Stoics would heartily have endorsed and would have recommended to anyone wishing to have a good life.
One other reason for playing the game against my other self is that it is, somewhat surprisingly, fun to do. It is quite enjoyable to “win a point” in this game by, for example, successfully overcoming a fear. The Stoics realized as much. Epictetus, as we saw in chapter 7, talks about the pleasure to be derived from denying ourselves various pleasures.5 Along similar lines, Seneca reminds us that even though it may be unpleasant to endure something, we will, on successfully enduring it, be pleased with ourselves.6
When I row competitively, it may look as though I am trying to beat the other rowers, but I am in fact engaged in a much more significant competition: the one against my other self.
He didn’t want to learn to row. He didn’t want to do work-outs, preferring instead to spend the predawn hours asleep in a warm bed. He didn’t want to row to the starting line of the race. (Indeed, on the way there, he repeatedly whined about how tired he felt.) And during the race, he wanted to quit rowing and simply let the other rowers win. (“If you just quit rowing,” he would say in his most seductive voice, “all this pain would come to an end. Why not just quit? Think of how good it would feel!”)
It is curious, but my competitors in a race are simultaneously my teammates in the much more important competition against my other self. By racing against each other, we are all simultaneously racing against ourselves, although not all of us are consciously aware of doing so. To race against each other, we must individually overcome ourselves—our fears, our lazi-ness, our lack of self-discipline. And it is entirely possible for someone to lose the competition against the other rowers— indeed, to come in last—but in the process of doing so to have triumphed in the competition against his other self.
The Stoics, as we have seen, recommend simplifying one’s lifestyle. Like programs of voluntary discomfort, lifestyle simplification is a process best left to advanced Stoics. As I have explained, a novice Stoic will probably want to keep a low philosophical profile. If you start dressing down, people will notice. Likewise, people will notice if you keep driving the same old car or—horrors!—give up the car to take the bus or ride a bike. People will assume the worst: impending bankruptcy, perhaps, or even the early stages of mental illness. And if you explain to them that you have overcome your desire to impress those who are impressed by a person’s external trap-pings, you will only make matters worse.
When I started experimenting with a simplified lifestyle, it took some getting used to. When, for example, someone asked me where I had gotten the T-shirt I was wearing and I answered that I had bought it at a thrift store, I found myself feeling a bit ashamed. This incident made me appreciate Cato’s manner of dealing with such feelings. Cato, as we have seen, dressed differently as a kind of training exercise: He wanted to teach himself “to be ashamed only of what was really shameful.” He therefore went out of his way to do things that would trigger inappropriate feelings of shame in himself, simply so he could practice overcoming such feelings. I have lately been trying to emulate Cato in this respect.
Since becoming a Stoic, my desires have changed dramatically: I no longer want many of the things I once took to be essential for proper living. I used to dress nattily, but my wardrobe has lately become what can best be described as utilitarian: I have one tie and one sport coat that I can don if required; fortunately, they are rarely required. I used to long for a new car, but when my sixteen-year-old car recently died, I replaced it with a nine-year-old car, something that a decade ago I could not have imagined myself doing. (The “new” car, by the way, has two things that my old car lacked: a cup holder and a working radio. What joy!) There was a time when I would have understood why someone would want to own a Rolex watch; now such behavior puzzles me. I used to have less money than I knew what to do with; this is no longer the case, in large part because I want so few of the things that money can buy.
I read that many of my fellow Americans are in deep financial trouble. They have an unfortunate tendency to use up all the credit that is available to them and, when this doesn’t satisfy their craving for consumer goods, to keep spending anyway.
Many of these individuals, one suspects, would be afflue
nt rather than bankrupt—and far happier as well—if only they had developed their capacity to enjoy life’s simple pleasures.
I have become dysfunctional as a consumer. When I go to a mall, for example, I don’t buy things; instead, I look around me and am astonished by all the things for sale that I not only don’t need but can’t imagine myself wanting. My only entertainment at a mall is to watch the other mall-goers. Most of them, I suspect, come to the mall not because there is something specific that they need to buy. Rather, they come in the hope that doing so will trigger a desire for something that, before going to the mall, they didn’t want. It might be a desire for a cashmere sweater, a set of socket wrenches, or the latest cell phone.
Why go out of their way to trigger a desire? Because if they trigger one, they can enjoy the rush that comes when they extinguish that desire by buying its object. It is a rush, of course, that has as little to do with their long-term happiness as taking a hit of heroin has to do with the long-term happiness of a heroin addict.
Having said this, I should add that the reason I have so few consumer desires is not because I consciously fight their formation. To the contrary, such desires have simply stopped popping into my head—or at any rate, they don’t pop nearly as often as they used to. In other words, my ability to form desires for consumer goods seems to have atrophied.
What brought about this state of affairs? The profound realization, thanks to the practice of Stoicism, that acquiring the things that those in my social circle typically crave and work hard to afford will, in the long run, make zero difference in how happy I am and will in no way contribute to my having a good life. In particular, were I to acquire a new car, a fine wardrobe, a Rolex watch, and a bigger house, I am convinced that I would experience no more joy than I presently do—and might even experience less.
As a consumer, I seem to have crossed some kind of great divide. It seems unlikely that, having crossed it, I will ever be able to return to the mindless consumerism that I once found to be so entertaining.
Let me now describe a surprising side effect of the practice of Stoicism. As a Stoic, you will constantly be preparing yourself for hardship by, for example, engaging in negative visualization or voluntarily causing yourself discomfort. If hardship doesn’t follow, it is possible for a curious kind of disappointment to set in. You might find yourself wishing that your Stoicism would be put to the test so you can see whether you in fact possess the skills at hardship management that you have worked to acquire. You are, in other words, like a firefighter who has practiced his firefighting skills for years but has never been called on to put out an actual fire or like a football player who, despite diligently practicing all season long, has never been put in a game.
Along these lines, the historian Paul Veyne has commented that if we attempt to practice Stoicism, “a calm life is actually disquieting because we are unaware of whether we would remain strong in the case of a tempest.”7 Likewise, according to Seneca, when someone attempts to harm a wise man, he might actually welcome the attempt, since the injuries can’t hurt him but can help him: “So far . . . is he from shrinking from the buffetings of circumstances or of men, that he counts even injury profitable, for through it he finds a means of putting himself to the proof and makes trial of his virtue.”8 Seneca also suggests that a Stoic might welcome death, inasmuch as it represents the ultimate test of his Stoicism.9
Although I have not been practicing Stoicism for very long, I have discovered in myself a desire to have my Stoicism tested.
I already mentioned my desire to be insulted: I want to see whether I will respond to insults in a Stoically appropriate manner. I have likewise gone out of my way to put myself into situations that test my courage and willpower, in part to see whether I can pass such tests. And while I was writing this book, an incident took place that gave me a deeper understanding of the Stoics’ desire to have their Stoicism tested.
The incident in question began when I noticed flashes of light along the periphery of my visual field whenever I blinked my eyes in a dark room. I went to my eye doctor and was informed that I had a torn retina and that, to prevent my retina from detaching, I should undergo laser surgery. The nurse who prepared me for the surgery explained that the doctor would repeatedly zap my retina with a high-powered laser beam. She asked whether I had ever seen a light show and said that what I was about to witness was a spectacle far more splendid than that. The doctor then entered the room and started zapping me. The first pops of light were indeed intense and beautiful, but then something unexpected happened: I stopped seeing the bursts of light. I could still hear the laser popping but saw nothing. Indeed, when the laser was finally turned off, all I could see through the eye that had been operated on was a purple blob that covered my entire visual field. It occurred to me that something might have gone wrong during the surgery—perhaps the laser had malfunctioned—and that I might as a result now be blind in one eye.
This thought was unsettling, to be sure, but after having it, I detected in myself another, wholly unexpected thought: I found myself reflecting on how I would respond to being blind in one eye. In particular, would I be able to deal with it in proper Stoic fashion? I was, in other words, responding to the possible loss of sight in an eye by sizing up the Stoic test potential of such a loss! This response probably seems strange to you; it seemed and still seems strange to me as well.
Nevertheless, this was my response, and in responding this way, I was apparently experiencing a predictable (and some would say perverse) side effect of the practice of Stoicism.
I informed the nurse that I could not see in the eye that had been operated on. She told me—at last! why didn’t she tell me before?—that this was normal and that my vision would come back within an hour. It did, and as a result I was deprived—thankfully, I think—of this opportunity to have my Stoicism tested.
Unless an untimely death prevents it, I will, in about a decade, be confronted with a major test of my Stoicism. I will be in my mid-sixties; I will, in other words, be on the threshold of old age.
Throughout my life, I have sought role models, people who were in the next stage of life and who, I thought, were handling that stage successfully. On reaching my fifties, I started examining the seventy- and eighty-year-olds I knew in an attempt to find a role model. It was easy, I discovered, to find people in that age group who could serve as negative role models; my goal, I thought, should be to avoid ending up like them.
Positive role models, however, proved to be in short supply. When I went to the seventy- and eighty-year-olds I knew and asked for advice on dealing with the onset of old age, they had an annoying tendency to offer the same nugget of wisdom: “Don’t get old!” Barring the discovery of a “fountain of youth” drug, though, the only way I can act on this advice is to commit suicide. (It has subsequently occurred to me that this is precisely what they were advising me to do, albeit in an oblique manner. It has also occurred to me that their advice not to get old echoes Musonius’s observation that “he is blessed who dies not late but well.”)
It is possible that when I am in my seventies or eighties I will conclude, as the elderly people I know seem to have concluded, that nonexistence is preferable to old age. It is also possible, though, that many of those who find old age to be so burdensome have themselves to blame for their predicament:
They neglected, while young, to prepare for old age. Had they taken the time to properly prepare themselves—had they, in particular, started practicing Stoicism—it is conceivable that they would not have found old age to be burdensome; instead, they might have found it to be, as Seneca claimed, one of the most delightful stages of life, a stage that is “full of pleasure if one knows how to use it.”10
Wh i l e I wa s w r i t i n g this book, my eighty-eight-year-old mother had a stroke and was banished (by me, as it so happens) to a nursing home. The stroke so weakened the left side of her body that she was no longer able to get out of bed by herself.
Not only
that, but her ability to swallow was compromised, making it dangerous for her to eat regular foods and drink regular liquids, which might go down her windpipe and trigger a potentially fatal bout of pneumonia. The foods she was served had to be pureed, and the liquids she was given had to be thickened. (There is, I discovered, a whole line of thickened beverages that have been created for people with swallowing problems.) Quite understandably, my mother was unhappy with the turn her life had taken, and I did my best to encourage her.
Were I devoutly religious, I might have attempted to cheer her up by praying with her or for her, or by telling her that I had arranged for tens or even hundreds of people to pray on her behalf. As it was, though, I found that the best words of encouragement I had to offer had a distinctly Stoical ring to them. She would, for example, tell me how difficult her situation was, and I would quote Marcus: “Yes, they say that life is more like wrestling than like dancing.”
“That’s very true,” she would murmur in reply.
She would ask me what she had to do to be able to walk again. I thought it was unlikely that she would ever walk again but did not say as much. Instead, I encouraged her (without giving a lecture on Stoicism) to internalize her goals with respect to walking: “What you need to concen-trate on is doing your very best when they give you physical therapy.”
She would complain about having lost most of the function of her left arm, and I would encourage her to engage in negative visualization: “At least you have the ability to speak,” I would remind her. “In the first days after the stroke, you could only mumble. Back then, you couldn’t even move your right arm and consequently couldn’t feed yourself, but now you can.
A Guide to the Good Life Page 22
