It’s So Much Easier to Do It the Hard Way

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How To Be Free

In this series, I will do my best to explain how living by the cardinal virtues, and understanding the fundamental principles of stoicism, can provide a better life, because if living a virtuous life was easy, everyone would do it, and if the virtuous path is the hard way, then it absolutely is, so much easier.

Folly

I began this blog with a new understanding that I am not the only woman in the world that thinks the way I do about, well anything. This was an assumption I was previously under you see, having never really met anyone that did. But then I found stoicism. As I read, it was instantly clear that these ancient Stoics were coming to the same conclusions I had, about a lot of things. Then I found stoic communities, and other people, other women were saying they had the same experience when they started reading about Stoicism. Then I felt very ashamed.  

Now, shame is not an emotion I’m very familiar with. It’s one of the many ways in which I’ve struggled to relate. And the reason I’m rarely ashamed is that I have usually followed the Stoic principles that allow me to be free of things like shame, I just didn’t know it. However, those principles don’t apply here, because I didn’t follow them.

I deserve to be ashamed because I had ignored the cardinal virtue of wisdom, by far the one I’m most arrogant about, and ignored it in such a flagrant way.

The Stoic virtue of Wisdom is not just understanding why you believe what you do but knowing yourself and becoming aware of ALL of your beliefs, even those that may have once been subconscious.

Most of my life was spent believing that no one could relate to my perspective, but why did I believe that? Was it a conclusion I drew solely from my experience? No, I’m forced to admit I believed people who use the word—“everyone”. Everyone is insecure. Everyone worries about what other people think. Everyone wants to fit in. Since I am confident, hold myself accountable to my own personal standards not others, and enjoy standing out, I must be alone on these things. The funniest part is that this is a trap “everyone” falls into. I’m not so special, I didn’t escape all of it, and I still have more to learn.  

I’m not looking for sympathy, it’s been a great life that I’ve shared with amazing people, who have shown me incredible love, joy, and patience. They have taught me a lot. If I were born into a stoic community, I may never have felt the need to explore friendships with people who thought differently, and I would certainly be poorer for it, and just as guilty of ignoring the Stoic virtue of wisdom.

So, folly is all around. I was not as vigilant as I believed in recognizing where all my impressions were derived. Turns out there have always been people who thought like me, but I never had the wisdom to look for them.

The Virtues

“Indeed, if you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, self-control, courage—in short, anything better than the sufficiency of your own mind, which keeps you acting according to the demands of true reason and accepting what fate gives you outside of your own power of choice—I tell you, if you can see anything better than this, turn to it heart and soul and take full advantage of this greater good you’ve found.”

I love that, and believe it with my whole heart, if your believer as well, then you don’t need convincing and might want to skip to the next section. However, if this quote doesn’t speak to you, its okay. By the end of this series, you will understand why this is so “holy *hit” that’s deep.

Of course, I wasn’t always convinced. Why should we live a virtuous life? We don’t live in a virtuous world. Aren’t there advantages to not questioning the status quo and keeping your head down? Won’t other people lie, cheat, bully, and manipulate? Is it even possible to survive if we don’t do the same?

To understand the benefits of living a virtuous life we first must question our assumptions, and then prioritize our motivations.  When we behave in opposition to our values, does what we achieve ever really compare to what we’ve given up, or  does it usually lead to overwhelming life complications, persistent negative emotions, and the endless pursuit of unfulfilling goals?

You’ve probably guessed my answer, and that I’m going to begin this series with…

Wisdom

(I touched on this concept in the very beginning, before even getting to the virtues in general, just to give you an idea of where I’m coming from, but now I’ll try to give you as clear a picture as I can. )

The way I like to break down wisdom, as a virtue, is to think about it in three parts.

  1. Analyzing my impressions and judgements for accuracy.
  • Recognizing the judgement behind emotional reactions.
  • Understanding what is within my control.

Of course, wisdom is used for more than that. It’s everything we do. It directs us, even to the point of guiding us to know when it is right to use the other virtues, if a situation calls for self-discipline or courage for example, but I did say that living this way would ultimately be easier, and this is the easiest way I’ve found to look at it.

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

Analyzing Impressions

When someone tells us something, it’s our instinct to question it. No one wants to be tricked or look foolish, but we are less likely to question our impressions. Most of our judgements about things were formed a long time ago without even realizing it, and when we think something was our own idea it’s much harder to reject.

We are surrounded by impressions we’re not even aware of. It seems unlikely anyone reading this believes that men are better than women, but it’s foolish to pretend our culture doesn’t give that impression. It’s tempting to think that by not believing it, it has no control over us, but we are affected.

I never identified with the qualities society attributes to women. Not even the positive ones. No one talked about other little girls like me, so I must not have been like other little girls. This was the impression I formed without even realizing it, that the girls were playing house, and dress-up, and imagining their wedding day, and I was not interested in any of that.

I didn’t think girls were bad, I just thought their interests were boring. I wouldn’t let society tell me what I liked, but I was willing to believe they knew what other girls liked. I actually had no idea if that’s what the other girls were doing, because I was with the boys. That’s my point, I didn’t bother to find out, and I will never know what friendships I may have missed out on because of an impression I didn’t even realize I had. Why did I do that? Why was I so willing to believe other girls weren’t any fun, or at least that I’d have to look harder to find the fun ones like me?

Well, first let me explain what I mean when I say I’m fun, I have a musical support rack always running in my mind with every action I take. If you’re a fan of old musicals— feel free to imagine the whole title number from Hello Dolly going on when I show up to a place—I do—and who greets Dolly in that number? Not a group of equally fun women. Men, elegant men, who feel, “it’s so nice to have her back where she belongs”, and I do know that’s where I belong, or at least it’s one of the places I belong. In the center of things, having fun, entertaining people. And no I  know, that might not be quite as unrelatable as I once believed.

So, I was Dolly, and I had a place, and even if there was no one like me, it was good to be different, exciting, and good to think I had found my place. But there were others like me. There are others like me. I just had to question my impressions to notice.

Judgements

Now that we’ve worked hard to make sure our impressions about the world aren’t just a curated selection of other people’s opinions, but indeed our own, what do we do about those judgements? What do we do with THOSE judgments, the ones we came up with ourselves, the ones based in reality? Can they harm us too?

Weirdly, yes. This is one of the most interesting concepts I’ve come across in Stoicism. It’s fundamental and it’s the biggest perspective change I’ve ever experienced.

“It’s not things that upset us but our judgements about things.”

Stoicism asks us to examine our emotions. When we have a negative reaction to something, it’s because of the judgement we’ve formed about it. How many times have we heard, or even thought, “I can’t help it, that’s just the way I feel.” And worse, we tend to think that’s the only conclusion anyone could have come to. Neither of those things are true.

We can help how we feel. We can recognize our opinion is just that, an opinion. We don’t have to get worked up about it. We don’t even have to have an opinion on every little thing.

There are a few techniques the Stoics used to free themselves from being controlled by emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety, shame, and melancholy, that I will talk about when we get to Temperance, but we have to use our wisdom to understand what’s happening. When we are visited by emotions that harm us, examining what judgement brought us to that emotion, is the first step in doing something about it.

Some of you might be thinking that there is no such thing as a harmful emotion. That fear, for example, is useful to motivate us to avoid danger. That is true, but only if you choose to be a person who can only act if motivated by emotion. We feel fear because we have made the judgement that the circumstance we are in is dangerous, not the other way around. If our judgement is true, say we’re being chased by an axe-wielding maniac, do we really need the fear to act? Well, biologically it does help sharpen your reaction time, but I think you get my point.

We have a tendency to think that emotion comes before judgment. We react to how we feel not realizing that the feeling is a reaction to how we think.

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

We give our emotions power over us, but it was always our power to give, and it’s still our power to take back.

I’m not telling you how to feel, I’m telling you, that you have the power to tell yourself. In fact, you already have.

-The Loquacious Stoic

Please return for Part 2, about the dichotomy of control.

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