A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (8 page)

In 180, Marcus became seriously ill. He refused to eat or drink in an attempt to hurry death.
⁴⁸
He died on March 17 of
that year, at age fifty-eight. His death provoked an outburst of public grief. His soldiers in particular were deeply moved by his passing.
⁴⁹

In much the same way as Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion was a boon for Christianity, Marcus’s Stoicism could have been a boon for that philosophy. Marcus, however, did not preach Stoicism. He did not lecture his fellow Romans on the benefits of practicing Stoicism; nor did he expose them to his philosophical writings. (The
Meditations
was a private journal—the original title was
To Himself
—and was published only after Marcus’s death.) And although Marcus’s interest in Stoicism seems to have led many Romans to self-identify as Stoics, presumably to curry favor with him,
⁵⁰
it did not trigger a widespread interest in the philosophy. In a sense, then, Marcus represents the high-water mark of Stoicism.

That Stoicism has seen better days is obvious. Have you, in the course of your life, encountered even one practicing Stoic? It is tempting to attribute this decline in popularity to some flaw in the Stoic philosophy. I would like to suggest, though, that the unpopularity of Stoicism is due not to a defect in the philosophy but to other factors. For one thing, modern individuals rarely see the need to adopt a philosophy of life. They instead tend to spend their days working hard to be able to afford the latest consumer gadget, in the resolute belief that if only they buy enough stuff, they will have a life that is both meaningful and maximally fulfilling. Furthermore, even if it dawns on these individuals that there is more to life than shopping, they are unlikely, in their pursuit of a philosophy of life, to turn to Stoicism. Either they have no idea at all what they
would have to do to practice Stoicism, or—more likely—they have the wrong idea.

Allow me, therefore, as part of my attempt to reanimate Stoicism, to explain, in the chapters that follow, what, exactly, is involved in the practice of this philosophy.

What’s the Worst That Can Happen?

A
NY THOUGHTFUL PERSON
will periodically contemplate the bad things that can happen to him. The obvious reason for doing this is to prevent those things from happening. Someone might, for example, spend time thinking about ways people could break into his home so he can prevent them from doing so. Or he might spend time thinking about the diseases that might afflict him so he can take preventive measures.

But no matter how hard we try to prevent bad things from happening to us, some will happen anyway. Seneca therefore points to a second reason for contemplating the bad things that can happen to us. If we think about these things, we will lessen their impact on us when, despite our efforts at prevention, they happen: “He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.”
¹
Misfortune weighs most heavily, he says, on those who “expect nothing but good fortune.”
²
Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that “all things everywhere are perishable.” If we fail to recognize this and instead go around assuming that we will always be able to enjoy the things we value, we will likely find ourselves subject to considerable distress when the things we value are taken from us.
³

Besides these reasons for contemplating the bad things that can happen to us, there is a third and arguably much more important reason. We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.

The psychologists Shane Frederick and George Loewenstein have studied this phenomenon and given it a name:
hedonic adaptation
. To illustrate the adaptation process, they point to studies of lottery winners. Winning a lottery typically allows someone to live the life of his dreams. It turns out, though, that after an initial period of exhilaration, lottery winners end up about as happy as they previously were.
⁴
They start taking their new Ferrari and mansion for granted, the way they previously took their rusted-out pickup and cramped apartment for granted.

Another, less dramatic form of hedonic adaptation takes place when we make consumer purchases. Initially, we delight in the wide-screen television or fine leather handbag we bought. After a time, though, we come to despise them and find ourselves longing for an even wider-screen television or an even more extravagant handbag. Likewise, we experience hedonic adaptation in our career. We might once have dreamed of getting a certain job. We might consequently have worked hard in college and maybe graduate school as well to get on the proper career path, and on that path, we might have spent years making slow but steady progress toward our career goal. On finally landing the job of our dreams, we will
be delighted, but before long we are likely to grow dissatisfied. We will grumble about our pay, our coworkers, and the failure of our boss to recognize our talents.

We also experience hedonic adaptation in our relationships. We meet the man or woman of our dreams, and after a tumultuous courtship succeed in marrying this person. We start out in a state of wedded bliss, but before long we find ourselves contemplating our spouse’s flaws and, not long after that, fantasizing about starting a relationship with someone new.

As a result of the adaptation process, people find themselves on a satisfaction treadmill. They are unhappy when they detect an unfulfilled desire within them. They work hard to fulfill this desire, in the belief that on fulfilling it, they will gain satisfaction. The problem, though, is that once they fulfill a desire for something, they adapt to its presence in their life and as a result stop desiring it—or at any rate, don’t find it as desirable as they once did. They end up just as dissatisfied as they were before fulfilling the desire.

One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get. And because we have probably failed to take such steps in the past, there are doubtless many things in our life to which we have adapted, things that we once dreamed of having but that we now take for granted, including, perhaps, our spouse, our children, our house, our car, and our job.

This means that besides finding a way to forestall the adaptation process, we need to find a way to reverse it. In other words, we need a technique for creating in ourselves a desire for the
things we already have. Around the world and throughout the millennia, those who have thought carefully about the workings of desire have recognized this—that the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have. This advice is easy to state and is doubtless true; the trick is in putting it into practice in our life. How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have?

T
HE 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. This technique—let us refer to it as
negative visualization
—was employed by the Stoics at least as far back as Chrysippus.
⁵
It is, I think, the single most valuable technique in the Stoics’ psychological tool kit.

Seneca describes the negative visualization technique in the consolation he wrote to Marcia, a woman who, three years after the death of her son, was as grief-stricken as on the day she buried him. In this consolation, besides telling Marcia how to overcome her current grief, Seneca offers advice on how she can avoid falling victim to such grief in the future: What she needs to do is anticipate the events that can cause her to grieve. In particular, he says, she should remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, “we should love all of our dear ones …, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them
forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.”
⁶
While enjoying the companionship of loved ones, then, we should periodically stop to reflect on the possibility that this enjoyment will come to an end. If nothing else, our own death will end it.

Epictetus also advocates negative visualization. He counsels us, for example, when we kiss our child, to remember that she is mortal and not something we own—that she has been given to us “for the present, not inseparably nor for ever.” His advice: In the very act of kissing the child, we should silently reflect on the possibility that she will die tomorrow.
⁷
In his
Meditations
, by the way, Marcus Aurelius approvingly quotes this advice.
⁸

To see how imagining the death of a child can make us appreciate her, consider two fathers. The first takes Epictetus’s advice to heart and periodically reflects on his child’s mortality. The second refuses to entertain such gloomy thoughts. He instead assumes that his child will outlive him and that she will always be around for him to enjoy. The first father will almost certainly be more attentive and loving than the second. When he sees his daughter first thing in the morning, he will be glad that she is still a part of his life, and during the day he will take full advantage of opportunities to interact with her. The second father, in contrast, will be unlikely to experience a rush of delight on encountering his child in the morning. Indeed, he might not even look up from the newspaper to acknowledge her presence in the room. During the day, he will fail to take advantage of opportunities to interact with her in the belief that such interactions can be postponed until tomorrow. And when he finally does get around to interacting with her, the
delight he derives from her company will not be as profound, one supposes, as the delight the first father experiences from such interactions.

Besides contemplating the death of relatives, the Stoics think we should spend time contemplating the loss of friends, to death, perhaps, or to a falling-out. Thus, Epictetus counsels that when we say good-bye to a friend, we should silently remind ourselves that this might be our final parting.
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If we do this, we will be less likely to take our friends for granted, and as a result, we will probably derive far more pleasure from friendships than we otherwise would.

A
MONG THE DEATHS
we should contemplate, says Epictetus, is our own.
¹⁰
Along similar lines, Seneca advises his friend Lucilius to live each day as if it were his last. Indeed, Seneca takes things even further than this: We should live as if
this very moment
were our last.
¹¹

What does it mean to live each day as if it were our last? Some people assume that it means living wildly and engaging in all sorts of hedonistic excess. After all, if this day is our last, we will not pay any price for our riotous living. We can use drugs without fear of becoming addicted. We can likewise spend money with reckless abandon without having to worry about how we will pay the bills that will come to us tomorrow.

This, however, is not what the Stoics had in mind when they advise us to live as if today were our last day. To them, living as if each day were our last is simply an extension of the negative visualization technique: As we go about our day,
we should periodically pause to reflect on the fact that we will not live forever and therefore that this day could be our last. Such reflection, rather than converting us into hedonists, will make us appreciate how wonderful it is that we are alive and have the opportunity to fill this day with activity. This in turn will make it less likely that we will squander our days. In other words, when the Stoics counsel us to live each day as if it were our last, their goal is not to change our activities but to change our state of mind as we carry out those activities. In particular, they don’t want us to stop thinking about or planning for tomorrow; instead they want us, as we think about and plan for tomorrow, to remember to appreciate today.

Why, then, do the Stoics want us to contemplate our own death? Because doing so can dramatically enhance our enjoyment of life.

And besides contemplating the loss of our life, say the Stoics, we should contemplate the loss of our possessions. Most of us spend our idle moments thinking about the things we want but don’t have. We would be much better off, Marcus says, to spend this time thinking of all the things we have and reflecting on how much we would miss them if they were not ours.
¹²
Along these lines, we should think about how we would feel if we lost our material possessions, including our house, car, clothing, pets, and bank balance; how we would feel if we lost our abilities, including our ability to speak, hear, walk, breathe, and swallow; and how we would feel if we lost our freedom.

Most of us are “living the dream”—living, that is, the dream we once had for ourselves. We might be married to the person
we once dreamed of marrying, have the children and job we once dreamed of having, and own the car we once dreamed of buying. But thanks to hedonic adaptation, as soon as we find ourselves living the life of our dreams, we start taking that life for granted. Instead of spending our days enjoying our good fortune, we spend them forming and pursuing new, grander dreams for ourselves. As a result, we are never satisfied with our life. Negative visualization can help us avoid this fate.