LivingTheStoicLife.org

Time 2021-06-13 11:28:03

Web Name: LivingTheStoicLife.org

WebSite: http://www.livingthestoiclife.org

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Ancient Stoicism provided a model for living the best life. This is my record of bringing this philosophy into the 21st century, and the daily application of the principles and practices of building a flourishing life. We have a larger resource site at thestoiclife.org.There is a Stoic action pattern that my wife and I follow. When we need to make an important decision, we rely on three key practices: hesitation, deliberation, and reservation.Hesitation simply means to slow down, to not jump to conclusions from incomplete data, to allow emotions to inform but not distort our perceptions. Hesitation tells us to wait and gather our strength before making the decision.Reservation is the practice of letting go of ultimate results, of acknowledging that though our action well-informed and well-intentioned, the facts are that we are not omniscient or omnipotent, and our actions, and in fact, all our lives are buffeted by the winds of a chaotic world.Deliberation is the fulcrum on which our lives are balanced. This is the pivot point of action. It is the decisions that come before the actions.Once, near the beginning of each quarter, we sit together to discuss the best path for our next three months. These are the Quarterly Deliberations.We use a handy five-point review to remind us of all the aspects of our lives we should consider as we strive to build a Flourishing Life:FaithFinanceFitnessFulfillmentFamilyOnce we have spent about three hours of in-depth conversation, checking balances, coordinating calendars, populating to-do lists, and communicating with friends and family, we can rest assured that we have done what we can with what we know to be as prepared as possible. But these are assumptions and subject to the vagueries of chance. Kind of like the rest of life, right?As practicing Stoics for many decades, Pamela and I have evolved a series of observations and celebrations tied to the cycles of life and nature. We've given them grand sounding names, more as a mnemonic than any desire for ostentation or ceremony. The thinking behind these practices supports our desire for our Stoic practices to evolved into Stoic habits, with reminders in place to do occasional 'course corrections' and get us back on track.Winter Solstice, which is coming up next week for those of us in the northern hemisphere, is one of the arbitrary external events we have chosen to connect our Stoic practice to. In so doing, we have conciously chosen to adopt or adapt existing cultural practices, though viewing them in a Stoic light.The Solstice has long been associated with the themes of birth and death. Christmas, the celebration of the New Year in western society, the ancient and present practices of the death and birth of the sun, and many, many more, have lent layer upon layer of practices and traditions to this time of year.In keeping with this focus, Pamela and I have created/adapted the Stoic daily practice of Memento Mori (remember death) to a formal observation we have called the Mortem Praeveniam, (prepare for death.) [For clarity - this is an observation we have made up, and you won't find it in the literature.]I have a blog post somewhere that goes into detail on the thinking behind it, but the gist of it is this:Behave and prepare as if you knew that there was a good chance that you would die on December 21st.A few people in our lives have had the fact of their mortality brought into stark relief, usually due to some incurable illness or near-death experience. We see in them a sudden change in behaviour, as all the things they had been putting off now take on an urgency. That is the point of the Mortem Praeveniam.The Memento Mori is meant to be a reminder that all the little things in our life don't really have the huge impat they seem to in the moment. It is used as a way to gain higher perspective, almost a distancing effect.The Mortem Praeveniam, takes a similar approach, but magnifies it, paradoxically creating a feeling of engagement, of closeness. It does so by reminding us that though we will die, our lives have impacted others, and thus so will our deaths. We should recognize and celebrate the former, and prepare for the latter.To practice the Morten Praeveniam, the period leading up to the Solstice (or thereabouts) can include getting your last Will and Testament in order, paying off debts and fulfilling obligations, making arrangements for longer term obligations, completing or updating funeral arrangements etc. The idea is to be ready to slip away at any moment with as many of the responsibilities you have already taken care of.On the more 'pleasant' side, it can also act as a reminder to get in touch with the most important people in our lives. It is a chance for us to express our love and admiration for them, recognize their impact in our lives through thoughtful words and gifts, or just meet together to share a meal, a drink and a laugh.As an annual celebration, the Mortem Praeveniam is both a celebration and a solemn occasion, reconnecting us both to each other and to the universe into which our energies will eventually disperse.It is a practice that I know a few people in our circle of friends have adopted, and they report being more serene for it.Let us know if this is something that appeals to you, or if you plan on trying to practice it this year.Do you follow any Stoic-based observations during this time of year? Feel free to share and comment.Grief is a beast with claws of blackest ink that catch and scratch and scrape down your back when you are not expecting it. They spring out and pierce the skin leaving scars small and large, opening old wounds again and again to bleed you dry of tears. They snick out like knife blades whose very threat makes you shy away from the anticipated pain.Grief is a beast with teeth of steel in a mouth of nightmares. It opens wide to swallow all the light and the joy in the world, and look like bars in a jail cell made from the love and tenderness of truth. The teeth rend apart memory, tearing away at thought and day to day walking and eating and swallowing a sleep like death.Grief is a beast with eyes of fire that seek you out in all of your hidden places. That seek and search and find and hold with their unblinking unforgiving gaze, accusing you of what you did and what you failed to do. The eyes see all of the possibilities lost forever to time and chance and throw them back in your path to trip you and make you stumble and fall and break down once again with regret over what could have been.Grief is a beast with a thousand arms that flail and fling and grasp, wrapping you in cords on unforgetfulness and forgetfulness so that you remember the smallest details of long past hurts and forget why you are crying again. The arms that squeeze the breath from you chest and the hope from your lungs. The arms reach out from behind photos that you forgot you had, and songs that you forgot that had once shared together, from the random sounds of a mall or the random shadow on the ground.Grief is a beast with a voice that screams and cries and wails and whimpers and begs for understanding where there is none. A voice cracked with age and the sounds of children sobbing in the darkness wanting mommy to fix it all when mommy has been gone all these many years. It is the voice of the siren that calls us back to remember the good times then shouts in our ears that THEY WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!Grief is a beast with legs that run and run and run and never get anywhere. That follow us into the night and to work and sit next to us in the empty seat and lie next to us in an empty bed. That shuffle slowly, catching on each cracked smile and jagged remembrance of thing never to come again. They are there beside us, behind us, in front of us, tripping us out of the way we would go,.Grief is a beast with soft warm fur of black and night and sweet scented forgetfulness. Whose teeth shine clean, eating our guilt. Whose claws pick away at the scars and scabs and reveal the new flesh beneath. Whose arms and legs find us and wrap us in the embrace that teaches us that thus is the way of all things. Whose eye and voice are full of forgiveness and soft sad laughter over the stupidest silliest things.Grief is a beast that visits our hearts for a season, but does not live there.It's a strange thing about life. People are more grieved by its loss than they are amazed by its presence. Oh, sure, we are all touched and flushed with joy when a baby is born. But the joy of life quickly loses its shine, so to speak. We begin to take for grated the very fact that we wake up each morning, breathing, moving, able to choose what we are going to do for the rest of the day.Most of the universe, as far as we know, doesn't do that. It doesn't choose to go to work or stay home, have cereal or toast (or both) for breakfast, to bring our lunch or to stop a McDonald's. The rest of the universe just is. It is pushed around by cause and effect, falling or rising as required by its properties and the forces that play upon it.Now there are some people that say that life is just like that. They claim that there is nothing special about it, that ideas of choice are illusory because we are exactly like the rest of the universe. We are merely parts in a grand machine slowly grinding its way through time and space, generating then discarding components as it pushes its way blindly along.It has been said more than once that we are like the eddies in a stream of matter and energy which momentarily coalesce into a human being, then are dispersed again.How can life have any meaning in this kind of universe? How can it matter whether we live or die, whether we are kind or cruel, virtuous or vicious? If there is no choice, there is no action, there is no guilt, there is no sense in anger or love or fear or joy.But, and maybe this is simply mass psychosis, but we feel that this simply isn't so. Life matters, but not life at any cost. Death is to be avoided, but not under every circumstance. Virtue, vice, love, anger, joy, grief, they all matter and have their place. An appointed place. Something, somehow, somewhere, outside of all of these things, stands before them all and gives them all importance and a relative place to stand.Life is good, if lived in the correct way, but it may be sacrificed for a greater cause. Death is the end of life, and should be shunned, unless it is embraced to create greater opportunities for life. Love, in moderation and focussed on worthy objects and people; anger, righteous indignation expressed in action and resistance to tyranny; joy in peace and laughter and in the presence of the rightness of things; and grief, subdued, releasing the pain of unexpressed confusion, of irredeemable loss, to capture and hold in one's hands the chaos that boils around us in the rest of the universe while we try to keep order in the rest of our lives.So grief, like all the rest, has its place and its day. And that day is today.These things come in cycles. Perhaps it's a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other, or maybe a spiral, revisiting the same sector as we pass through. It could be that the inherent (or is it apparent) duality of it all forces the switch of emphasis, back and forth eternally.I am speaking of the gender question. Man, Woman. Male, Female. Him, Her. Stoic... Stoic?I'm in my 50's now. I am Father, Brother, Son, Husband, Uncle. These titles alone imply my gender. I am also Teacher, Friend, Employee, Author, and Stoic. These say nothing about my gender, and I don't think they should.It's a bit of a contentious issue, especially in 2017 (or has it never been any different?). The Stoics, ancient and modern, have been debating this point without any clear resolution. Cut to the chase, but I figure that gender has little (or nothing) to do with being a Stoic. How we express that Stoicism will, of course, be coloured by our gender, as it will by our age or geo-political-economic situation. But these things are incidental.Socrates' Beard(along with the rest of his face)Musonius Rufus, often lauded for being the most 'feminist' of the ancient Stoics, if not ancient philosophers, is part of where the trouble starts. His lectures "That women too should study philosophy" and "Should daughters receive the same training as sons?", and especially "What is the chief end of marriage?" (parts of which I read at my daughter's wedding) are actually quite an interesting read, given their ancient Roman context. But they aren't all that interesting given our present context (western, democratic, twenty-first century). We read that and think, "Of course! Why is this even a question?"The very same Rufus though, also said in "On cutting the hair" that men who cut their hair and shave their cheeks "have become slaves of luxurious living and are completely enervated, men who can endure being seen as womanish creatures, hermaphrodites, something which real men would avoid at all costs." (Even in his time, the question of a beard was contentious in the discussion of Greek and Roman manliness and philosophy.)He is echoed by that most admired of ancient Stoics, Epictetus, who when (hypothetically) threatened with a beheading for refusing to shave his beard, preferred to keep the facial hair, perhaps in spite of his face. [NOTE: I understand that it was perceived as a Badge of the philosopher, but as modern Stoics, is anything but our Behaviour a badge?]Why all this talk of beards? Because we are men, Men, MEN I TELL YOU! But wait. We are male incidentally (in most cases). With a respectful nod to those who struggle with their gender identity in the face of modern attitudes (how is this still a thing?), there isn't much we have done to be male that we can justifiably take credit for.Now I hear some say that "Live in accordance with Nature" is THE Stoic guide to life and, they argue, what is more natural than our gender. This is, however, a simplistic interpretation of the Stoic dictum, and a simplistic understanding of human gender. (Think Again - Globe and Mail)Groups, support and otherwise, are popping up to support being a man, being manly, being a Stoic man. These are great, in their place, and may provide a side entrance to the main point. It isn't that being a man, or even a manly man with unique 21st-century manly man problems is a problem, but it simply isn't the point. It isn't the point of life, let alone of Stoicism.Stoicism is simply this: become the most excellent you. That may, or may not, involve getting into gender issues, but it is definitely about being courageous, just, wise, and temperate. Being Stoic is about exploring and expressing our connection and interconnections with each other and with the world around us. We need to be careful, cautious, and considerate when it comes to questions of gender. We need to be focused on virtue when it comes to the question of how to live the best life. We need to be Stoic.It is becoming trendy to be Stoic, cool to be cool in the face of turbulence and trouble, a hacker of the ultimate computer: the human mind.Articles about Stoicism are being published in nearly every major newspaper, in large part due to its most well known popularizers, Tim Ferris and Ryan Holiday. They are not the first to speak about Stoicism or to offer their take on 'Stoic Tips and Tricks,' nor will they be the last. The message, though, is pretty much the same: have the life you've always wanted, without all of the pain of living. It is the easy street to serenity.But why now? Stoicism, as a philosophy, is over 2300 years old. Granted, there was a quiet period where other voices took center stage, and still hold sway. The continual publishing of Seneca and the rediscovery of Marcus Aurelius (from a single document!), as well as the more recent translation of Musonius Rufus, not to mention the perennial favourite Stoic among Stoics, Epictetus, have all in their way subtly influenced western society. But this notoriety, this interest, this is new.Why? Perhaps, as many have pointed out, Stoicism is a philosophy for troubled times. The proliferation of media coverage of disaster and destruction in every arena of life has given some the impression that these are terrible times indeed. People in pain seek a relief, and Stoicism seems to offer tricks to take the mind off the big questions."Don't worry about things you can't control, and there really isn't much you can control anyway.""Life is long, if you know the trick to making it so.""Don't let your emotions get the better of you.""Stop reading about being a good person, and just be one."All good advice. Really. It is. But is reducing Stoicism to fortune cookie aphorisms really the cure? Or, like so many "Make your life better in six easy lessons" movements, this one is doomed to failure by its own superficiality.Approaching Stoicism as a life hack is, if anything, treating the symptom. Stoicism as a life STYLE is about searching out the cause and effecting a deep change. As Seneca said, Stoicism is not meant for mere improvement, but for transformation.I don't worry about things not under my control, because through careful reflection (and much painful failure) I have learned what control is, and how pitifully little I have of it. But I have also learned that though I simply don't HAVE to have control over everything, everything is still under control.Life IS long, if by long you mean today, this hour, this moment. If you learn to embrace death, yours and of everyone you hold dear. If you practice dying, daily. Then, and only then, can each moment be fully lived, and more life can be squeezed into a gaze into the eyes of your loved one than in eons of merely being alive.My emotions are things I have, not what I am. They are an expression of my thoughts, of my thinking patterns, of my beliefs about the universe and my place in it. I don't seek to suppress my so-called negative emotions, I seek instead to align my life with a truer understanding of reality.I CAN become a good person, a better person than I currently am, approaching the ineffable sage who represents my very best self. But first, I have to understand what 'good' means, and good in what way, and good for what. I have to plumb the depths of my own frailty and failure to seek the lofty heights of goodness.Finally, life hacks, in and of themselves, seek to make the person more successful. Stoicism, as a lifestyle, seeks to make a person more human.Well we have reached the end of Week 1 of the Seneca Letter Reading Plan. In this week, Pam and I have read Letters I - V together. Each morning, over our coffee and cereal, we take turns reading and discussing the letter of the day. I have been making massive notes in my copy of the Letters, writing and underlining with abandon.The notes range from observations to themes. The most important notes are to myself, reminders of ways in which I can improve my own life. To be clear, just because Seneca said it doesn't mean that I believe it! Everything is challenged, everything is put to the test.I am not a Stoic because I have subscribed to a creed passed down through guru to priest to anointed messenger. There are no Stoic saints, saviours, or even sages. Just men (unfortunately, no women - a great loss) who wrote what they had learned of life and how to live it. Now I was just trying to match their experiences to mine, and see if they could teach me anything.This week, Seneca has. It was all about that limited commodity, really the only thing that is truly mine. Time. The first letter was all about how we waste it, how we fritter it away in pointless pursuits, or in his own words "while we are doing that which is not to the purpose." [I.1] What the purpose that we SHOULD be working towards remains to be seen. He ends with a dire warning that waiting too long to regulate our time would leave us with too little left to make a difference.Before going on, I wanted to pause here. One of the things that I love about the Stoics is their bracing honesty. No golden gates, endless opportunities for forgiveness and or rebirth to get it 'right' next time. This is it. Waste this opportunity and it's gone. Some mistakes, misdeeds and vicious acts are irretrievable. Time passes, and you lose every opportunity that you don't take. There may be more opportunities later, but it will never be the same one.Time only moves in one direction. Everything behind us is already in the hands of death [I.2], and worrying too much about what stretches before us is merely the result of "a mind that is fretted." [V.8] The only time that matters is now, the present and what we do with it. [V.9] One of Seneca's recurring themes in these early letters is the focus on THIS day, and how we "reckon" it's worth. [I.2] He starts out by instructing us to "lay hold of today's tasks," Those daily tasks include continued studies in order to acquire some new philosophical fortification, [II.4] which we in turn must put into practice to make ourselves better. [V.1] Every day we should think about the length of our lives [IV.5], that we are dying daily [I.2] and what we should do with the one day we have.One of the biggest challenges to this focus is where to find the time to study [I.4], and to practice. Letters II - V dispense with time-wasters and objections. Don't know where to focus your studies? Read Letter 2. Pulled in too many directions by social obligations to fair-weather friends? Read Letter 3. Worried about the future? Read Letter 4. Spending your time on getting or getting rid of things? How you look? How your home looks? Read Letter 5. Time is suddenly yours in spades.This is just the beginning though. Book I has seven more letters, and two more weeks. I am looking forward to seeing if my understanding so far holds up. In the meantime, I have some reading to do.

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