Thank You, Epictetus

Searching for Serenity

(c) Copyright (2017) by Kathleen Spaltro

All Rights Reserved

For many years, I have enjoyed rereading James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon and W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge. In these somewhat similar stories, World War One veterans——an English officer and an American airman——seek inner peace in a world maddened by unending violence and insatiable materialism. The Englishman embraces the wisdom of Shangri-La, a Buddhist lamasery in Tibet; the American visits Tibet and also experiences the wisdom of a Hindu saint in an Indian ashram. The two novels emphasize Eastern spirituality.

Despite my longstanding liking for Lost Horizon and The Razor's Edge, my life has taught me that I need not forsake all Western traditions to seek inner serenity. The Greek and Roman philosophical traditions include the precepts and practice of Stoicism. For about the last eight years, the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus has greatly influenced my thinking and behavior. I am a very imperfect Stoic, but my attempted practice of Stoicism has improved my life. I have found Epictetus very helpful even though I find practicing Stoicism difficult. Reading Epictetus calms me.

Control

Epictetus emphasizes self-control, self-mastery, duty. This seemed daunting and one-sided until I understood Epictetus's insight that other people and external circumstances are simply not within my power to control. I can control only my own thoughts, values, decisions, and actions. This insight creates great responsibility but also grants great power. It shifts focus from my futile struggle to control others and to control my external environment to my possibly successful exercise of power over myself. My seizing power over myself takes away others' power over me and diminishes the power of circumstances to distress me. "Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions. Vigilantly practice indifference to external conditions. Your happiness can only be found within."

While I find it very hard to change myself, I find it impossible to change other people. Why should I continue to waste most of my energy on an impossible task when I could instead expend energy on an attainable goal?

The emphasis on controlling my inner world makes me responsible for my own well-being and happiness. It also refashions my approach to problems in my external world by transforming these situations into challenges to me to develop greater self-mastery. It takes away power from other people and from external circumstances and returns power to me. With that return of power to and over my inner self comes greater freedom.

Opportunity

Stoicism has shifted my locus of control to my inner world. Epictetus teaches me to see my difficulties as opportunities to develop greater self-mastery and resourcefulness. "Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths."

In a way, Epictetus steers me right into the storms of my life, instead of away from them. He advocates grasping the nettles of life, thinking about the inevitability of loss and death, and appreciating what I have instead of wishing to have something——anything——else. "... you move forward by using the creative possibilities of this moment, your current situation. You begin to fully inhabit this moment, instead of seeking escape or wishing that what is going on were otherwise."

One of these nettles is my inability to control the outcome of my efforts. Despite determined efforts, I can certainly fail to reach an objective. Epictetus notes that the results of my striving oftentimes depend on factors beyond my control and that I should focus on DOING my best but not on the RESULTS of doing my best. "When you...devote yourself instead to your rightful duties, you can relax. When you know you've done the best you can under the circumstances, you can have a light heart....In good fortune or adversity, it is the good will with which you perform deeds that matters——not the outcome. So take your attention off of what you think other people think and off of the results of your actions."

Another nettle is feeling frustrated by other people. Epictetus explains that I create my own sense of frustration but I could choose NOT to feel frustrated. "When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it. What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance."

Power

Only I can choose my thoughts, values, decisions, and actions. Only I can frame a problem as an opportunity to improve myself. Only I can face the inevitabilities of my own life with equanimity. Only I can avoid feelings of failure by doing my best and then letting go. Only I can take back the power to upset me that I have unwisely ceded to other people and to events and circumstances.

  

Seemingly a philosophy of self-constraint, Epictetus's Stoicism is exactly that, but it is also a philosophy of self-emancipation. "By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free."

Freedom

The ancients voiced a maxim that "Freedom is the knowledge of necessity." Useless resistance to the inevitabilities of life——loss, age, death——entraps me rather than frees me. Clearly understanding and accepting these inevitabilities ironically liberates me from them. I can choose to not live in dread; instead, I can lose my fear. Although Stoic principles demand that I unlearn practically all the behaviors and habits taught during my upbringing, Stoic habits of mind and patterns of behavior give the great gift of freedom from fear. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I have learned from Stoicism that I have now, and I always have had, the power to liberate myself.

Quotations from Epictetus come from the contemporary translation of The Art of Living by Sharon Lebell.

First appeared in The Woodstock Independent