Could I Become a Stoic?

 

Monday the sun shone in Northport.

Long ago, back in the Middle Ages of my life—my early Middle Ages, that is—in the university office where I worked for a while there was a faculty member whose positive attitude and relentless good cheer bordered on mania. Over time I came to appreciate Jack's irrepressible good humor but could not buy into his oft-proclaimed belief that “There are no problems! Only opportunities!” 

 

Now, however, in early old age, I find myself, maybe, being won over to that way of thinking. 

Easier to feel hopeful when the sun is shining --

My change of mind and heart probably began before the death of my husband, although that enormous loss certainly made everything else I might have named a “problem” earlier in life seem trivial by comparison. As Jamie Raskin wrote of the death of his son by suicide at age 25, what was there to fear, now that the worst had already happened? And yet, even before that had come a cascade of crises, each to be met with calm and resolve, because no situation is helped by panic. Driving the Artist to the ER or calling for an ambulance, waiting out a surgery, living through days when he was “unresponsive” (hospital staff avoided using the word coma, until I finally asked if that’s what it was) were all situations that called on me to respond with something other than screaming hysteria. I had no choice but to rise to each difficult occasion and deal with it as it was. I could hardly welcome those situations as “opportunities,” and even now it’s a stretch to think of them that way, but they definitely demanded that I stretch in other ways. 

 

—But that might not have been the start, either, because over previous years I had gradually managed to leave behind, for the most part, my younger, reactive, self-dramatizing, often self-pitying and resentful self. Having a child and going back to work and navigating those paths simultaneously demanded that I deal with the world as a grownup, although growing up was for me, as it is for most of us (I think), a lifetime process. I should say it is, because I hope to keep growing as long as I live.

 

Growth. Rarely steady. Gradual but also subject to plateaus, to backslidings, to rushes ahead and then stalls. Sometimes to simple determined and dogged trudging forward.

On Wednesday, winter came back.

Living alone (with a dog, thank heaven!) has given me a fair share of opportunities for growth. Losing my billfold on a cross-country trip (which meant traveling without driver’s license and credit card) and flat tire in Kansas on another trek; coming home to a failed septic pump that had to be replaced; having the farmhouse furnace give up the ghost (fortunately, that happened in the spring and not in the dead of winter)—all were unwelcome and unchosen situations that, nevertheless, had to met head-on. 

Scary time: when my puppy had a fever!

Another piece of the adult puzzle I had discovered back in the late 1980s was that taking action was empowering, all by itself, regardless of results. Does that sound obvious? The thing is, I didn’t have to take monumental action or even, all the time, action having anything to do with the unwanted situation. Sometimes it was as simple as pulling my head out from underneath the covers and sweeping dust bunnies out from underneath the bed. Looking back on my days of frenetic housekeeping in the face of situations beyond my control, I see that I was proving to myself that I was not helpless. I might have been only a pawn in their game, but in my own game I was the queen!

 

In the course of the past year, my fourth as a widow, more or less adjusted to that inescapable reality, I was helped not only by supportive friends and family and the companionship of my dog but also by the business I started back in 1993, little foreseeing then how vital it would be to my future life. My bookshop provides me with social life, morale support (and that is not a typo: I insist on morale, rather than moral for the real meaning of the phrase), and with daily literary and intellectual and, yes, casual, friendly conversations, as well as not only the excuse but the necessity of ordering new books on a regular basis.

 

I haven’t changed the subject.

 

Last year I ordered a book by Mel Robbins, Let Them, because I had gotten so much out of her various short video clips that I wanted to share her ideas with others. 

While reorganizing my spices at home on Tuesday this week (a dismal, rainy day), I listened to a conversation between Robbins and the “Daily Stoic” podcaster, Ryan Holiday, intrigued to hear him compare what Robbins calls her “Let Them theory” to stoicism, as both are about accepting what you cannot change. (Sounds like AA, doesn’t it?) Robbins takes pains to assure readers and listeners and viewers that she is not counseling the acceptance of disrespect or abuse. You don’t have to stay in a job forever with a disrespectful boss (although you might have to stay until you find something else), and you don’t have to stay in an abusive relationship with someone who puts no value on you, only on what he can get out of you. (Change pronouns as necessary for different situations.) What you are accepting is reality, the fact that you cannot change anyone but yourself, and that no one else is going to change because you would like them better a different way. 

 

First you do the “Let Them” step, and then, crucially, comes the “Let Me” step, where you decide what you will do in response to someone else's behavior that you don't like. It won’t be attempting to change that other person. You’ve already realized you have no power to do that. What you have power over is your response. In this conversation with Ryan Holiday, Robbins says you don’t even have to buy her book! She'll tell you what’s in it! What I have written here is my nutshell version.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the sixteenth emperor of Rome, who lived from 121 to 180 BCE, has been having a massive resurgence in popularity in 21^st-century America, and it’s not hard to understand the reasons for that. The long, gradual “fall” of the Roman Empire was already underway when the Stoic emperor (adopted, not born, into a family of aristocrats) came to power. War and conflict, the Antonine Plague and famine were some of the hardships in Rome during the 16th emperor's reign. He knew some tough times and had advice for getting through them.

 

As an experiment, I open the Meditations at random, and there on page 75 is a pithy bit of advice: 

 

Don’t align your thinking with that of a man who’s dishonoring you. Don’t think as he wants you to think, but see things as they truly are.

 

I close the book and open it once more, again at random: 

 

Perfection of character lies in this: to live each day as though it were your last, without turmoil, without listlessness, and without pretense. 

 

I can’t say I have ever studied Marcus Aurelius, and it’s been years since I read Epictetus, but clearly the times are nudging me in the direction of the Stoics, and so this week, in that spirit, and because each day could be my last, I have been focusing on telling people clearly how important they are to me, in ways large and small. As one of Northport’s beloved elders, Reverend Marshall Collins, told me once while we were still next-door business neighbors, “I’m giving you flowers while you’re alive.” (A good friend of his had recently died, and he was reflecting on all the flowers at the funeral.) Too often we think that surely people already know that we value them, but even our closest friends and family, secure in our love for them, get a boost from hearing appreciation put into words. I told our postmaster in Northport how much I love the post office and gave her a big hug! “Spread the word! These are strange times!” she urged, and I told her I do sing the praises of the USPS, often.

 

A last word today in closing: “Let Them” does not have to mean disengaging from politics. Don't waste your time and mental energy on conversations and activities that make you feel powerless, in politics or anywhere else, but please take a stand for kindness and justice and law (the real kind of law, with features like due process!), if you can find it within yourself to do so, because—just as Rome was not built in a day, neither did it fall in a day.

 

Don’t act as if you were going to live for ten thousand years. Fate is hanging over your head. While you live—while you can—be a good man.

 

Man or woman, be a good person--while you can!

Gift from and memento of that good man,
Rev. Marshall Collins - 
Today's post is dedicated to him.