Philosophy

This week I’ve been reading Epictetus’s Discourses again. According to the notes I made on the inside cover, I haven’t read it since August 2017—half a decade ago. That’s way too long between reads for one of the best Stoic doctrines there is.

Anyway, I’m getting so much out of re-reading it. It feels like I’m reading it for the first time. Epictetus’s teachings are central to Stoicism, but more importantly, they’re central to living the good life. Which is why I want to share…

A few core teachings of Epictetus

“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

The core of Stoicism is this: some things are in our control, some things are not in our control.

The things that are in our control: our thoughts and actions.

The things that are not in our control: everything else.

What other people say or do is none of our business. It’s only what we say or do that has any consequence. 

“You have to work either on your commanding-faculty or on external things,” Epictetus said. “Either the inner or the outer should be the focus of your efforts, which means adopting the role either of a philosopher or of an ordinary person.”

Below are the 3 things that, if we constantly keep in mind, will allow us to live productive, joyful lives:

1. Focusing on what is in our control (perfecting our character, doing our duty)

2. Being indifferent to things that are not in our control (fame, money, power)

3. Loving everything that happens (Not complaining when you’re sick, but loving it, because it was fated to happen. And anything fated to happen is necessary and good.)

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.

Holocaust survivor, Dr. Edith Eva Eger, was a young teenager when she was sent to a Nazi concentration camp. On the day of her arrival, her parents were ushered to the gas chamber by a guard who, later that same day, made her dance for him for his entertainment. In her incredible book The Choice, Dr. Eger—now a world-renowned psychologist—recounts how she was tested by a patient—a fourteen-year-old boy, sent to her by a judge, for car theft. The boy leaned on her desk and said, “I’m going to kill all the Jews.” He said he would also kill anyone who wasn’t white. He went on ranting about the blights to America’s purity.

“I thought I would be sick,” Dr. Eger says. “I struggled not to run from the room. What is the meaning of this? I wanted to shout. I wanted to shake the boy, say, Who do you think you’re talking to? I saw my mother go to the gas chamber. … My whole being trembled with unease, and I struggled with the inclination to wag my finger, shake my fist, make him accountable for his hate—without being accountable for my own. This boy didn’t kill my parents. Withholding my love wouldn’t conquer his prejudice.”

She prayed for the ability to meet him with love—the accepting and unconditional love she gave to all her patients. “I summoned every image I had of unconditional love.” She called to mind a story of one of the Righteous Gentiles, Corrie ten Boom, who was sent with her family to a concentration camp. Corrie’s sister died there, in her arms. Eventually, she was released (due to a clerical error) and a few years later, met with one of the vilest guards at her camp—one of the guards who was responsible for her sister’s death. She could have lashed out at him, spit at him, wished him the worst. Instead, “she prayed for the strength to forgive him, and she took his hands in her own. She says that in that moment, the former prisoner clasping the hands of the former guard, she felt the purest and most profound love.”

“I wondered if it was possible that this racist boy had been sent to me so I could learn about unconditional love,” Dr. Eger remembers thinking. “What opportunity did I have in this moment? What choice could I make right then that could move me in the direction of love?”

She decided to let the boy talk. She listened. She realized they had a lot in common. She had lost her parents, and so had he. “We both thought of ourselves as damaged goods. In letting go of my judgment, in letting go of my desire for him to be or believe anything different, by seeing his vulnerability and his yearning for belonging and love, in allowing myself to get past my own fear and anger in order to accept and love him, I was able to give him something [he] couldn’t [give himself]—an authentic image of his own worth. When he left my office that day, he didn’t know a thing about my history. But he had seen an alternative to hate and prejudice, he was no longer talking about killing, he had shown me his soft smile. And I had taken responsibility that I not perpetuate hostility and blame, that I not bow to hate and say, You are too much for me. … We have the capacity to hate and the capacity to love. Which one we reach for—our inner Hitler or inner ten Boom—is up to us.”