A Guide to the Good Life ← We Can Solve This

They thought people should enjoy the good things life has to offer, including friendship and wealth, but only if they did not cling to these good things. Indeed, they thought we should periodically interrupt our enjoyment of what life has to offer to spend time contemplating the loss of whatever it is we are enjoying.

The Cynics had little interest in philosophical theorizing. They instead advocated a rather extreme philosophical lifestyle. They were ascetics. Socially speaking, they were the ancient equivalent of what we today call the homeless:

He believed hunger to be the best appetizer,

“he used to partake of a barley cake with greater pleasure than others did of the costliest of foods, and enjoyed a drink from a stream of running water more than others did their Thasian wine.”

the Cynic Crates—who, as we have seen, was the Stoic philosopher Zeno’s first philosophical teacher—wasn’t content simply with badgering the people he encountered on the street; he also entered people’s homes uninvited to admonish those within. For this habit, he became known as “the Door Opener.”

To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live,

A Stoic sage, according to Diogenes Laertius, is “free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report.” He never feels grief, since he realizes that grief is an “irrational contraction of the soul.” His conduct is exemplary. He doesn’t let anything stop him from doing his duty. Although he drinks wine, he doesn’t do so in order to get drunk. The Stoic sage is, in short, “godlike.”

the Stoics thought there is nothing wrong with enjoying the good things life has to offer, as long as we are careful in the manner in which we enjoy them. In particular, we must be ready to give up the good things without regret if our circumstances should change.

Just as wood is the medium of the carpenter and bronze is the medium of the sculptor, your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living.

Marcus is, in other words, a rare example of a philosopher king and perhaps the only example of a philosopher whom subjects wanted to have as their king.

“the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”

Misfortune weighs most heavily, he says, on those who “expect nothing but good fortune.”

THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question. They recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value—that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would.

Epictetus counsels that when we say good-bye to a friend, we should silently remind ourselves that this might be our final parting.

Most of us are “living the dream”—living, that is, the dream we once had for ourselves.

We normally characterize an optimist as someone who sees his glass as being half full rather than half empty. For a Stoic, though, this degree of optimism would only be a starting point. After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen. And if he is atop his Stoic game, he might go on to comment about what an astonishing thing glass vessels are: They are cheap and fairly durable, impart no taste to what we put in them, and—miracle of miracles!—allow us to see what they contain. This might sound a bit silly, but to someone who has not lost his capacity for joy, the world is a wonderful place.

To such a person, glasses are amazing; to everyone else, a glass is just a glass, and it is half empty to boot.

By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.

One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted. To them, the world is wonderfully new and surprising. Not only that, but they aren’t yet sure how the world works: Perhaps the things they have today will mysteriously vanish tomorrow. It is hard for them to take something for granted when they can’t even count on its continued existence.

in a frightening number of cases, these children grow up to be adults who are not only unable to take delight in the world around them but seem proud of this inability.

The third drawback to catastrophe-induced transformations is that the states of joy they trigger tend to wear off. Those who come close to dying but subsequently revive typically regain their zest for living. They might, for example, feel motivated to contemplate the sunsets they had previously ignored or to engage in heartfelt conversations with the spouse they had previously taken for granted. They do this for a time, but then, in all too many cases, apathy returns:

To be able to be satisfied with little is not a failing, it is a blessing

we can do some historical research to see how our ancestors lived. We will quickly discover that we are living in what to them would have been a dream world—that we tend to take for granted things that our ancestors had to live without, including antibiotics, air conditioning, toilet paper(!), cell phones, television, windows, eyeglasses, and fresh fruit in January. Upon coming to this realization, we can breathe a sigh of relief that we aren’t our ancestors, the way our descendants will presumably someday breathe a sigh of relief that they aren’t us!

Suppose, he says, that our servant breaks a cup.15 We are likely to get angry and have our tranquility disrupted by the incident. One way to avert this anger is to think about how we would feel if the incident had happened to someone else instead. If we were at someone’s house and his servant broke a cup, we would be unlikely to get angry; indeed, we might try to calm our host by saying “It’s just a cup; these things happen.” Engaging in projective visualization, Epictetus believes, will make us appreciate the relative insignificance of the bad things that happen to us and will therefore prevent them from disrupting our tranquility.

as Epictetus points out, “It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united.”3 A better strategy for getting what you want, he says, is to make it your goal to want only those things that are easy to obtain—and ideally to want only those things that you can be certain of obtaining.

While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves

While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves—more precisely, by changing our desires

Indeed, says Epictetus, you will become invincible: If you refuse to enter contests that you are capable of losing, you will never lose a contest.

“Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.”

Marcus observes, “Nothing is worth doing pointlessly.”

Cato and the other Stoics found a way to retain their tranquility despite their involvement with the world around them: They internalized their goals. Their goal was not to change the world, but to do their best to bring about certain changes. Even if their efforts proved to be ineffectual, they could nevertheless rest easy knowing that they had accomplished their goal: They had done what they could do.

a good man will welcome “every experience the looms of fate may weave for him.”

When a person is fatalistic with respect to the future, she will keep firmly in mind, when deciding what to do, that her actions can have no effect on future events. Such a person is unlikely to spend time and energy thinking about the future or trying to alter it. When a person is fatalistic with respect to the past, she adopts this same attitude toward past events. She will keep firmly in mind, when deciding what to do, that her actions can have no effect on the past. Such a person is unlikely to spend time and energy thinking about how the past might be different.

what about worldly success? Will the Stoics seek fame and fortune? They will not. The Stoics thought these things had no real value and consequently thought it foolish to pursue them, particularly if doing so disrupted our tranquility or required us to act in an unvirtuous manner.

although the Stoics didn’t seek worldly success, they often gained it anyway.

Besides contemplating bad things happening, we should sometimes live as if they had happened. In particular, instead of merely thinking about what it would be like to lose our wealth, we should periodically “practice poverty”: We should, that is, content ourselves with “the scantiest and cheapest fare” and with “coarse and rough dress.”

Musonius takes this technique one step further: He thinks that besides living as if bad things had happened to us, we should sometimes cause them to happen.

In particular, we should periodically cause ourselves to experience discomfort that we could easily have avoided.

the Stoics’ mistrust of pleasure doesn’t end here. They also counsel us to make a point of sometimes abstaining from other, relatively harmless pleasures. We might, for example, make a point of passing up an opportunity to drink wine—not because we fear becoming an alcoholic but so we can learn self-control.

Whereas the ordinary person embraces pleasure, the sage enchains it; whereas the ordinary person thinks pleasure is the highest good, the sage doesn’t think it is even a good; and whereas the ordinary person does everything for the sake of pleasure, the sage does nothing.

by practicing Stoic self-denial techniques over a long period, Stoics can transform themselves into individuals remarkable for their courage and self-control.

The Stoics will then point out that exercising self-control has certain benefits that might not be obvious. In particular, as strange as it may seem, consciously abstaining from pleasure can itself be pleasant. Suppose, for example, that while on a diet, you develop a craving for the ice cream you know to be in your refrigerator. If you eat it, you will experience a certain gastronomic pleasure, along with a certain regret for having eaten it. If you refrain from eating the ice cream, though, you will forgo this gastronomic pleasure but will experience pleasure of a different kind: As Epictetus observes, you will “be pleased and will praise yourself” for not eating

Sextius, who, at bedtime, would ask himself, “What ailment of yours have you cured today? What failing have you resisted? Where can you show improvement?”

When contemplating whether to criticize someone, he should consider not only whether the criticism is valid but also whether the person can stand to be criticized. He adds that the worse a man is, the less likely he is to accept constructive criticism.

He has heard that someone has spoken ill of his writing, and he starts treating this critic as an enemy. But then he starts thinking of all the people whose writing he himself has criticized. Would he want all of them to think of him as an enemy? Certainly not. Seneca’s conclusion: If you are going to publish, you must be willing to tolerate criticism.

We should, in other words, create within ourselves a Stoic observer who watches us and comments on our attempts to practice Stoicism

“If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself.”

According to the Stoics, practicing Stoicism, besides affecting the thoughts and desires we have when awake, will affect our dream life. In particular, Zeno suggested that as we make progress in our practice, we will stop having dreams in which we take pleasure in disgraceful things.

Seneca tells us that his goal in practicing Stoicism is not to become a sage; instead, he takes his progress to be adequate as long as “every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.”

when I do my social duty, says Marcus, I should do so quietly and efficiently. Ideally, a Stoic will be oblivious to the services he does for others, as oblivious as a grapevine is when it yields a cluster of grapes to a vintner. He will not pause to boast about the service he

when we awaken in the morning, rather than lazily lying in bed, we should tell ourselves that we must get up to do the proper work of man, the work we were created to perform.

Marcus therefore concludes that doing his social duty will give him the best chance at having a good life. This, for Marcus, is the reward for doing one’s duty: a good life.

Epictetus advises us to form “a certain character and pattern” for ourselves when we are alone. Then, when we associate with other people, we should remain true to who we are.

There will be times when we must associate with annoying, misguided, or malicious people in order to work for common interests. We can, however, be selective about whom we befriend.

The Stoics therefore recommend that we avoid befriending people whose values have been corrupted, for fear that their values will contaminate ours.

We should instead seek, as friends, people who share our (proper Stoic) values and in particular, people who are doing a better job than we are of living in accordance with these values.

while enjoying the companionship of these individuals, we should work hard to learn what we can from them.

Vices, Seneca warns, are contagious: They spread, quickly and unnoticed, from those who have them to those with whom they come into contact.

Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, “who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.”

He also advises us, when we do socialize, to be circumspect in our conversation. People tend to talk about certain things; back in Epictetus’s time, he says, they talked about gladiators, horse races, athletes, eating and drinking—and, most of all, about other people. When we find ourselves in a group that is conversing about such things, Epictetus advises us to be silent or to have few words; alternatively, we might subtly attempt to divert the talk to “something appropriate.”

Marcus recommends that when we interact with an annoying person, we keep in mind that there are doubtless people who find us to be annoying

More generally, when we find ourselves irritated by someone’s shortcomings, we should pause to reflect on our own shortcomings. Doing this will help us become more empathetic to this individual’s faults and therefore become more tolerant of him. When dealing with an annoying person, it also

When dealing with an annoying person, it also helps to keep in mind that our annoyance at what he does will almost invariably be more detrimental to us than whatever it is he is doing.7 In other words, by letting ourselves become annoyed, we only make things worse.

A good Stoic, Marcus says, will not think about what other people are thinking except when he must do so in order to serve the public interest.

People, Marcus reminds us, do not choose to have the faults they do. Consequently, there is a sense in which the people who annoy us cannot help doing so.

It is therefore inevitable that some people will be annoying; indeed, to expect otherwise, Marcus says, is like expecting a fig tree not to yield its juice. Thus, if we find ourselves shocked or surprised that a boor behaves boorishly, we have only ourselves to blame: We should have known better.

In our dealings with others, we should operate on the assumption that they are fated to behave in a certain way. It is therefore pointless to wish they could be less annoying. But having said this, I should add that elsewhere, Marcus suggests not only that other people can be changed but that we should work to change them.

the biggest risk to us in our dealings with annoying people is that they will make us hate them, a hatred that will be injurious to us.

Therefore, we need to work to make sure men do not succeed in destroying our charitable feelings toward them.

He adds that if we detect anger and hatred within us and wish to seek revenge, one of the best forms of revenge on another person is to refuse to be like him.

When Marcus applies this analytical technique to sex, he discovers that it is nothing more than “friction of the members and an ejaculatory discharge.”15 We would therefore be foolish to place a high value on sexual relations and more foolish still to disrupt our life in order to experience such relations.

Epicurus may have been the philosophical rival of the Stoics, but he shared their misgivings about sex: “Sexual intercourse has never done a man good, and he is lucky if it has not harmed him.”

in a good marriage, two people will join in a loving union and will try to outdo each other in the care they show for each other.

One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true. If it is, there is little reason to be upset. Suppose, for example, that someone mocks us for being bald when we in fact are bald: “Why is it an insult,” Seneca asks, “to be told what is self-evident?”

Another sting-elimination strategy, suggested by Epictetus, is to pause to consider how well-informed the insulter is. He might be saying something bad about us not because he wants to hurt our feelings but because he sincerely believes what he is saying, or, at any rate, he might simply be reporting how things seem to him.

Rather than getting angry at this person for his honesty, we should calmly set him straight.

One particularly powerful sting-elimination strategy is to consider the source of an insult. If I respect the source, if I value his opinions, then his critical remarks shouldn’t upset me. Suppose, for example, that I am learning to play the banjo and that the person who is criticizing my playing is the skilled musician I have hired as my teacher. In this case, I am paying the person to criticize me. It would be utterly foolish, under these circumstances, for me to respond to his criticisms with hurt feelings. To the contrary, if I am serious about learning the banjo, I should thank him for criticizing me.

Suppose, however, that I don’t respect the source of an insult; indeed, suppose that I take him to be a thoroughly contemptible individual. Under such circumstances, rather than feeling hurt by his insults, I should feel relieved: If he disapproves of what I am doing, then what I am doing is doubtless the right thing to do.

What should worry me is if this contemptible person approved of what I am doing.

In the same way that a mother would be foolish to let the “insults” of her toddler upset her, we would be foolish to let the insults of these childish adults upset us. In other cases, we will find that those insulting us have deeply flawed characters. Such people, says Marcus, rather than deserving our anger, deserve our pity.

a Stoic sage, were one to exist, would probably take the insults of his fellow humans to be like the barking of a dog. When a dog barks, we might make a mental note that the dog in question appears to dislike us, but we would be utter fools to allow ourselves to become upset by this fact, to go through the rest of the day thinking, “Oh, dear! That dog doesn’t like me!” ONE OTHER important sting-elimination strategy, say the Stoics, is to keep in mind, when insulted, that we ourselves are the source of any sting that accompanies the insult. “Remember,” says Epictetus, “that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting.” As a result, he says, “another person will not do you harm unless you wish it; you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed.”7 From this it follows that if we can convince ourselves that a person has done us no harm by insulting us, his insult will carry no sting. This last advice is really just an application of the broader Stoic belief that, as Epictetus puts it, “what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about these things.”8 To better understand this claim, suppose someone deprives me of my property. He has done me harm only if it is my opinion that my property had real value.

Of the kinds of humor we might use in response to an insult, self-deprecating humor can be particularly effective. Along these lines, Seneca describes a man, Vatinius, whose neck was covered with wens and whose feet were diseased, who joked about his own deformities so much that others had nothing to add.

Epictetus also advocates the use of self-deprecating humor. Suppose, for example, you find out that someone has been saying bad things about you. Epictetus advises you to respond not by behaving defensively but by questioning his competence as an insulter; for example, you can comment that if the insulter knew you well enough to criticize you competently, he wouldn’t have pointed to the particular failings that he did but would instead have mentioned other, much worse failings.

By laughing off an insult, we are implying that we don’t take the insulter and his insults seriously.

THE PROBLEM WITH replying to insults with humor is that doing so requires both wit and presence of mind. Many of us lack these traits.

Refusing to respond to an insult is, paradoxically, one of the most effective responses possible.

For one thing, as Seneca points out, our nonresponse can be quite disconcerting to the insulter, who will wonder whether or not we understood his insult. Furthermore, we are robbing him of the pleasure of having upset us, and he is likely to be upset as a result.

Notice, too, that by not responding to an insulter, we are showing him and anyone who is watching that we simply don’t have time for the childish behavior of this person. If a humorous response to an insult shows that we don’t take the insulter seriously, a nonresponse to an insult makes it look as if we are indifferent to the existence of the insulter: Not only don’t we take him seriously, but we don’t take him at all!

if a student insults her teacher in front of the class, the teacher would be unwise to ignore the insult. The insulter and her peers might, after all, interpret the teacher’s nonresponse as acquiescence and as a result unleash a barrage of insults against him. This behavior would obviously disrupt the classroom and make it difficult for students to learn. In such cases, though, the Stoic needs to keep in mind that he is punishing the insulter not because she has wronged him but to correct her improper behavior. It is, says Seneca, like training an animal: If in the course of trying to train a horse, we punish him, it should be because we want him to obey us in the future, not because we are angry about his failure to obey us in the past.

Epictetus would reject this manner of dealing with insults as being woefully counterproductive. He would point out, to begin with, that the political correctness movement has some untoward side effects. One is that the process of protecting disadvantaged individuals from insults will tend to make them hypersensitive to insults: They will, as a result, feel the sting not only of direct insults but of implied insults as well. Another is that disadvantaged individuals will come to believe that they are powerless to deal with insults on their own—that unless the authorities intercede on their behalf, they are defenseless.

The best way to deal with insults directed at the disadvantaged, Epictetus would argue, is not to punish those who insult them but to teach members of disadvantaged groups techniques of insult self-defense. They need, in particular, to learn how to remove the sting from whatever insults are directed at them, and until they do this, they will remain hypersensitive to insults and will, as a result, experience considerable distress when insulted.

“let your tears flow, but let them also cease, let deepest sighs be drawn from your breast, but let them also find an end.”

SENECA OFFERS lots of specific advice on how to prevent anger. We should, he says, fight our tendency to believe the worst about others and our tendency to jump to conclusions about their motivations.

We need to keep in mind that just because things don’t turn out the way we want them to, it doesn’t follow that someone has done us an injustice. In particular, says Seneca, we need to remember that in some cases, the person at whom we are angry in fact helped us; in such cases, what angers us is that he didn’t help us even more.

Another way to overcome our obsession with winning the admiration of other people is to go out of our way to do things likely to trigger their disdain.

Cato consciously did things to trigger the disdain of other people simply so he could practice ignoring their disdain.

MANY PEOPLE are haunted by a fear that in some cases significantly constrains their freedom, namely, the fear of failure. The individuals in question might contemplate doing something that will test their courage, determination, and ability, but then decide against the attempt, with the key factor in their decision being the fear of failure. From their point of view, it is better not even to attempt something than to fail while trying to accomplish it.

Musonius advocated a simple diet. More precisely, he thought it best to eat foods that needed little preparation, including fruits, green vegetables, milk, and cheese.

when someone eats, he should choose food “not for pleasure but for nourishment, not to please his palate but to strengthen his body.”

HOW MUCH WEALTH should we acquire? According to Seneca, our financial goal should be to acquire “an amount that does not descend to poverty, and yet is not far removed from poverty.” We should, he says, learn to restrain luxury, cultivate frugality, and “view poverty with unprejudiced eyes.”

Stoic philosophy “calls for plain living, but not for penance.”

“This is what it means to have rehearsed the lessons one ought to rehearse, to have set desire and aversion free from every hindrance and made them proof against chance. I must die. If forthwith, I die; and if a little later, I will take lunch now, since the hour for lunch has come, and afterwards I will die at the appointed time.”

Musonius thinks exile deprives a person of nothing that is truly valuable. Exile cannot prevent us, for example, from being courageous or just.

Diogenes, with typical Cynic wit, responded that although it was true that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he in turn had sentenced them to remain in Sinope.)

Start Now and Prepare to Be Mocked

My response to such cases is to point this out to them: “What can you do about this situation? Nothing! Then why are you worrying about it? It is out of your hands, so it is pointless to worry.” (And if I am in the mood, I follow this last comment with a quotation from Marcus Aurelius: “Nothing is worth doing pointlessly.”)

My yoga teacher, though, never talks about pain; instead, she talks about poses giving rise to “too much sensation.”

I have become a collector of insults. I have also become a collector of butterflies.

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.”

WHEN DOING THINGS 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.”

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

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.

Seneca reminds us that even though it may be unpleasant to endure something, we will, on successfully enduring it, be pleased with ourselves.

By racing against each other, we are all simultaneously racing against ourselves,

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

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.

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