Been a while as my lack of having anything interesting to impart has stopped me from writing.
This post has been percolating in the back of my mind but I never really realised it.
But as one does I was chatting to my anaesthetic nurse the other day and she mentioned a book she was reading about stoicism. I’ve heard of Marcus Aurelius – one of the major proponents of stoicism – but not any real detail. Just a few intriguing quotes.
So I’ve just finished the book by Brigid Delaney (who is a Guardian columnist of late) called “Reasons not to worry – how to be Stoic in chaotic times”
I don’t actually like the title, it doesn’t do the content justice in my opinion. Although I’m not sure I have a better one!
So as has been mentioned before I’ve been deep in a mid life crisis for many years now. Around that has been lots of reading and that combined with “crucial conversations” courses and my medical simulation debriefing skills well there’s lots of overlap.
Concepts such as “benefit of the doubt” and “don’t sweat the small stuff” to parenting tips “the opinions of others aren’t as important as you think they are…” and various other trite clichés. But clichés for a reason.
So onto stoicism. It’s 2000 years old. It’s quite something that a philosophy thought up by thinkers from 2000 years ago still holds true today. But it truly does. And like all philosophies it’s not the work of a moment to become a stoic…
If you want excellent examples and explanations then I would read the book. As I guess philosophy should be, I found it truly profound. It’s in my top 5 books of all time instantly. There’s some confirmation bias there, as it agrees with some of my innate philosophies – it just labels those as stoicism. Nonetheless in my effort to find meaning in life, it does just that…
I’ll give some examples of basic tenets and you can make up your own mind…
The control test or the dichotomy of control – one of the most basic tenets. There are things you can control and things you can’t.
You can control your: Character, your reactions and how you treat others.
Everything else is beyond your control and as such you should try to reduce the amount of energy you expend on those things for it is wasted energy.
We may aspire to many things in life – wealth, health, reputation, fame to name a few. But we should strive to know that our lives will be still worthy without any of these things. Not only worthy but liveable…
All things in life are transitory, health, wealth and indeed life. As such they can disappear at any time. And in the case of life that disappearance is inevitable. We should acknowledge that we may need to live without these things…
Seek tranquillity
Use reason
Good character comes from the four virtues of courage, self control, wisdom and justice.
Go easy on your judgement, give the benefit of the doubt, you don’t know the whole story,
Slow your emotions, ease your anger…
All things in moderation…
Be happy with what you have in your life now, this day…
Time is our greatest currency…
Talk about death… But don’t dwell. Death is inevitable we should prepare for it, both our own and that of those close to us.
These are all one liners pulled from the greater writings but you can see already that there is inherent wisdom in these philosophies. So much so that these 2000 year old tenets are repeated often in many a self help manual…
But there is no church, there are no priests, no proselytising (I’m paraphrasing Brigid here) you get to decide whether practising this philosophy suits you. And practice is what is needed because a lot of this stuff doesn’t come easy. That self control part of character especially…
It also makes a pretty decent basis for parenting (for me anyway) what better than to teach our children to concentrate on how good they can be and not worry about how good others think they are. For those thoughts are beyond their control and they shouldn’t waste precious energy on them.
Because you can’t control the actions or thoughts of others you can inflict double harm upon yourself. The first insult makes you angry for example and then the two days stewing on it makes you doubly wounded. And the insulter has probably moved on with their lives…
I could go on but I would end up writing a book! And there’s a brilliant one already out there, I would recommend you go and read it. But because we can’t change the thoughts and deeds of others, only model those good deeds ourselves… I’m going to go and read it again…