In his fabulous book, How to Be Perfect, Michael Schur says moral philosophy can be summed up in these four questions:
What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
Is there something I could do that’s better?
Why is it better?
It’s important to note that these are questions, not statements. To live philosophically is to live reflectively.
Maybe you think you don’t need to reflect. You’re a good person, you always try to do what’s right. Maybe you don’t even give much thought to doing what’s right—you just do it. It’s automatic.
It’s here where Aristotle, or Marcus Aurelius, or Emmanuel Kant might have reminded you that you’re not perfect. None of us are. We can always improve. And since we can always improve, we must always make an effort to improve. And we can’t make a genuine effort if we’re not mindful and aware of our everyday thoughts and actions.
I’ve found journaling to be the most useful way to reflect. I have a morning routine that I’ve used for years. It consists of a little reading and a lot of writing. (Trust me, it’s not nearly as daunting as it sounds.) I read a page from The Daily Stoic and A Calendar of Wisdom. I use a prompt from one of these books to write an intention for the day in a notebook. Then, in a separate notebook, I write my morning pages (you can read about my experience with them here). Coined by Julia Cameron, morning pages are 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. The whole routine takes about 25 minutes, and it’s the most important part of my day.
The ancient Stoics knew the importance of journaling, of being reflective and mindful. Marcus Aurelius journaled in the morning to prepare himself for the day. Seneca journaled in the evening, appraising his actions, “concealing nothing” from himself. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” he said. Epictetus reminded his students to keep their philosophy lessons at hand day and night, write about them, and talk about them with others. The Stoics knew that philosophy involved daily mindfulness and work.
Perhaps they, like the Buddha and other philosophical and religious leaders, intuited what we now know to be scientifically true: left to their own devices, our minds pretty much run themselves. We have almost no control over the thoughts that pop into our conscious minds throughout the day. And this is why…
Reflective Thoughts are Truer Than Everyday Thoughts
Here’s a thought experiment, cited by Mark Manson in Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope, that nineteenth-century sociology founder, Emile Durkheim posed: What would life be like if there was no crime? If everyone was polite and respectful to others? If no one was violent or harmed anyone? What would happen? Would we all hold hands and sing songs?
According to Durkheim, no. The opposite would happen. We wouldn’t feel happier about not killing each other—we would just become equally upset over trivial things. As Mark summarizes, “Our minds simply amplify (or minimize) our problems to fit the degree of stress we expect to feel.”
I’m using this experiment to illustrate a common theme I’ve found: our brains have their own agendas. Evolutionary psychology confirms this. In Why Buddhism Is True (a remarkable book that shows how psychology intersects philosophy), Princeton University professor, Robert Wright, explains how our evolutionary wiring distorts our view of reality. Natural selection, he says, has one goal: to get genes into the next generation. That’s it.
The problem with natural selection’s hardwiring is that it hasn’t caught up to the modern world. The sweet tooth that compelled hunter-gatherers to eat fruit (so they would survive and get their genes into the next generation) is the same sweet tooth we have today—only now we have processed sugar at our disposal. So, if this hardwiring produces thinking that’s not aligned with reality, if it creates feelings that are disproportionate to the situation, so be it. It has its own agenda.
The times during the day when we’re doing nothing in particular—not working, not watching a movie, not playing a sport—are when this agenda becomes most pronounced. Our brains enter into what scientists call the “default mode network.” In this mode, thoughts pop into our conscious minds seemingly out of nowhere. (And because thoughts cause feelings and feelings dictate behavior, it’s easy to see why an understanding of this is important.) Scientists can only speculate as to why, exactly, one thought and not another enters into our conscious mind. But one thing is clear: thoughts think themselves.
If you’re confused, we’re in the same boat. But the gist is this: we have a lot less agency over our thoughts and feelings than we typically think.
This is why, Robert argues, mindful meditation (or, in my experience, mindfulness and journaling) can be life-altering. Being mindful of our thoughts means being observant of them, instead of being controlled by them. When we observe anything—a plant, a table, a thought, a feeling—we create distance from it. This distance allows us to not become carried away by our initial impressions. It allows us to say to it what Epictetus advised: “Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent.”
By being reflective, we become better observers of our minds. We’re quicker to notice and discard untrue and harmful thoughts. We’re able to see—even if only slightly—a more accurate view of reality.