This is the third and final essay, written by a Stoic, about what it means to practice an ancient philosophy in the modern world. (Read the first essay and the second essay.)

Zeno of Citium, the Greek philosopher who first formulated Stoicism in 300 B.C., said that as you advanced in your Stoic practice, you would be transformed in certain ways. He claimed, for example, that there would be a change in your dream life. For years after I started practicing Stoicism, though, I could detect no change in my dreams. And then, about a year ago, I had a dream that was indisputably Stoical.

In the previous essay in this series, I mentioned that I have been trying to withdraw from the “social hierarchy game” and that, as part of this effort, I have been trying to reduce the extent to which I engage in self-promotion in conversations and e-mails. In my Stoical dream, I was walking to meet a friend for lunch. While I walked, I thought about some good news I had just received: “It will be fun sharing this with my friend.” But then I realized that my primary motive for sharing this news would be to make myself look good in the eyes of my friend. It amounted, in other words, to a fairly blatant form of self-promotion. “Better to keep the news to myself,” I concluded.

That was when I awoke and realized, with some delight, that I had just had a dream in which I was putting my Stoic practice to work. In other words, my conscious practice of Stoicism had apparently succeeded in altering the subconscious portion of my mind that serves as screenwriter for my dreams. This phenomenon, although surprising, was only one of the surprising side-effects of my practice of Stoicism. Allow me to describe some of the others.

Life throws curveballs: your affairs are
moving along splendidly when some obstacle is suddenly
introduced. Maybe a windstorm strikes your home, and you are
without power for a week. Maybe you are at the airport when it
is announced that your flight is delayed for hours. Or maybe a
routine medical examination reveals that you have a serious
disease. Most people respond to such curveballs with
disappointment and anger.

The practice of Stoicism,
though, gives us tools for dealing with life’s unpleasant
surprises. It is important, say the Stoics, to keep in mind
that however bad your situation is, it could almost certainly
be worse. (In doing this, of course, we are engaging in
negative visualization.) It is also important to keep in mind
that, however difficult your life may be, there is almost
certainly someone, somewhere who would love to be living your
life. Along these lines, realize that a paraplegic is living
the quadriplegic’s dream.

But according to Stoic
philosopher Seneca, the practice of Stoicism, besides preparing
us for life’s curveballs, can have the curious effect of making
us wish that one of them would be thrown our way. To understand
this phenomenon, we need to keep in mind that Stoics spend
considerable time and energy developing their ability to
respond to life’s challenges. If life is kind to them, though,
and never presents them with such challenges, Stoics can feel
frustrated and might, as a result, find themselves wishing that
a challenge would come their way.

Stoics resemble, in
other words, a football player who has trained hard all season
but has never been put in a game. This player and the
unchallenged Stoic might both long for an opportunity to put
their training to work.

As a result, if life does
throw a curveball at a Stoic, instead of being disappointed and
angry, he is likely to perk up: “Aha! A Stoic test! At last,
Coach has put me in a game!” Meeting a predicament with this
frame of mind changes everything. Consider again the situation
in which people at an airport are waiting for an airplane that
has been delayed. Many passengers will pout, complain, or
engage in angry tirades, but the Stoic will instead devote his
energy to figuring out how best to prevent this challenge from
disrupting his tranquillity.

Life’s curveballs also
represent an opportunity for a Stoic to judge the extent to
which he has succeeded in acquiring the character traits that
he, as a Stoic, will have been trying to develop. Was he kind
in a situation that called for kindness? Was he courageous in a
situation that called for courage? If he ends up scoring well
on a “Stoic test,” he will be delighted, even though the test
itself might have been quite unpleasant. Thus, a situation that
for the other passengers will simply have been a bummer might
for the Stoic be the occasion of a minor personal triumph.

In my own Stoic
practice, I haven’t found myself longing for life to bean me
with a curveball — not yet, at any rate. I have, however,
experienced the phenomenon of perking up on being thrown one. I
have also gone out of my way to experience challenges that,
while not on a par with the sort of challenges life can
present, nevertheless provide me with a chance to practice my
Stoic techniques for dealing with life’s curveballs.

Along these lines, I have taken up competitive rowing,
a sport that presents me with interesting albeit “artificial”
challenges. It tests, for example, my self-discipline and
perseverance, my ability to withstand both mental and physical
discomfort, and on rare occasion, my courage. Such athletic
challenges pale in comparison to, say, the challenge of being
informed that one has a serious illness; at the same time,
successfully dealing with these lesser challenges is doubtless
good training for the curveballs I might experience in the
remainder of my life.

Let me describe some of the
other ways in which I have been transformed by the practice of
Stoicism. In the previous essay, I asserted that if we withdraw
from the social hierarchy game, it will have a profound effect
on our material desires. I am evidence for the truth of this
assertion. I have substantially (but by no means entirely)
withdrawn myself from this game, and it has had a profound
impact on my desire for “stuff.”

Indeed, I have become
dysfunctional as a consumer. Drag me to a mall, and I am
unlikely to buy anything. To the contrary, I will probably
respond by standing there, staring in astonishment at all the
things for sale that I not only don’t need and not only don’t
want, but can’t even imagine myself wanting.

Along
similar lines, I have lost the desire I once had to own a
“desirable” car. I currently drive a 1997 Honda Civic that I
bought used. I not only don’t mind driving this car but have
reached the curious stage at which I am convinced that the
acquisition of a “cool car” would have at best zero
impact on my happiness — meaning that it not only
wouldn’t make me happier but might even have the
effect of making me less happy.

It is true,
I realize, that some people will look down on me for being
satisfied with such a car. Thanks to my withdrawal from the
social hierarchy game, though, I no longer feel the need to win
the approval of these individuals. In fact, if someone refuses
to talk to me because of the car I drive, he is probably doing
me a favor by shunning me: I suspect that I would have little
to gain from conversation with such an individual.

My
withdrawing from the social hierarchy game has also had another
curious side-effect: besides changing how I relate to other
people, it seems to have changed how they relate to me. Before
becoming a Stoic, I assumed that the best way to befriend
people was to do things calculated to win their admiration —
in other words, to play the social hierarchy game with great
skill. My subsequent experience, though, has led me to wonder
whether the opposite is the case.

It is difficult to
befriend someone who insults you or who clearly thinks of
himself as socially superior to you. If you withdraw from the
social hierarchy game, though, you will suppress both your
insulting tendencies and your self-promotional tendencies.
People will therefore come to regard you as “socially safe” —
as an individual, that is, against whom they don’t have to
compete in the battle for position on the social hierarchy.
Such social non-combatants will presumably be easier to talk
to, easier to confide in, and even easier to befriend than an
ardent social gamer would.

Practicing Stoicism is
supposed to make our lives less irritating. I have found that
it serves this function admirably, although I certainly
wouldn’t claim that it has eliminated the
old sources of irritation from my life. In fact, it has
introduced one entirely new source.

In the previous
essay in this series, I explained how, by practicing insult
pacifism, I was able to remove much of the sting from insults
directed at me. I also discovered, though, that this defense
wasn’t perfect: on occasion, people’s insults managed to pierce
my Stoic defenses and get under my skin. On these occasions, I
would find myself, hours later, still thinking about the event
and what I should have said to my insulter. The cases in
question even affected my sleep: at bedtime, I would succeed in
pushing insult-related thoughts out of my mind, only to have
them rush back in.

Then it dawned on me that, thanks
to my practice of Stoicism, I was experiencing what might be
called meta-irritation: besides being
irritated by the insults, I was irritated that these insults
had succeeded in irritating me! If I weren’t a practicing
Stoic, I would not have been plagued by meta-irritations; then
again, I suspect that these irritations are insignificant in
comparison to the additional irritation insults would cause me
if I hadn’t adopted Stoic insult-response strategies.

In connection with my discovery of meta-irritation, I
should mention that practicing Stoicism has transformed me into
an acute observer of myself. Thus, besides experiencing various
emotions (such as feelings of irritation on being insulted), I
observe the manner in which I experience those emotions (which
observations may give rise to additional feelings of
irritation). Besides having thoughts (about being insulted, for
example), I pay attention to how I came to have those thoughts.

As a result of these last observations, I have become
fully aware of how little control I have over what thoughts pop
into my mind. (The mind that I own, like the cat I used to own,
appears to have a mind of its own!) Unless I am careful,
though, these seemingly random thoughts can end up determining
how I spend my days and consequently how I spend my life.

This completes my nutshell description of Stoicism. It
is, as I have explained, a philosophy of life that specifies
what in life is most worth attaining and how best to pursue it.
There are, to be sure, rival philosophies of life: Zen Buddhism
is one of them, and turning to ancient philosophy, we find many
others. Which philosophy works best for a person depends, I
think, on his or her circumstances and personality.

If, as a result of reading the essays in this series,
you end up choosing one of these other philosophies, I won’t
mind at all. I will instead feel that I have done my Stoic duty
to make myself socially useful. It is far better, after all,
that you live in accordance with some
philosophy of life — even if it isn’t Stoicism — than that
you try to live, as most people do, with no philosophy of life
at all.

(Image: detail from Hercules and the
Hydra (1475), Antonio Pollaiolo)