As you may have realized, I have become an enthusiastic consumer of Stoic philosophy and thinking. I have always been a fan of Epictetus’ views and teachings about worrying about only those things that we have control over and not fretting about the things we don’t, and – in that regard – I have been a good stoic for one (if not two) decades. And although I had an appreciation for Epictetus, I leaned more into the angst and meaninglessness of existentialism as it tends to be a much better fit for my depressive realism. In the end though, I think that someone can view the world through a more-existential lens while finding value in the virtues of stoicism, which is what I have been trying to do for the last year.
What are the central virtues of stoicism, you ask? They are quite simple really. They include wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, and each of the virtues is exercised through reason. For the sake of this writing, I intend to focus on temperance, a fancy word for self-control. Temperance is the ability to not rely on fleeting pleasures for happiness (and to not allow the fleetingness of pain to destroy happiness in turn).
I have worked really hard to better exercise temperance in the inter-personal spaces I occupy. Armed with the increased wisdom of age and an ever-evolving view of what is just or fair, I have made significant efforts to be even more patient with the kids, more understanding of Christine, and less confrontational with my father. Reason affords me perspective, perspective affords me empathy, and empathy affords me temperance. I don’t feel compelled to yell at the kids, Christine, or my father when I recognize that yelling is an expression of my own unreasoned anger or frustration.
No person has the power to force me to be angry or frustrated; that choice resides within me alone. Instead of getting angry when Victoria is walking on the footboard of my bed as if it were a balance beam, it helps to remember that she was never told not to. Rather than taking Christine’s apparent inability to maintain a more tidy space in the home personally, I benefit from trying to understand how busy she is and how unhappy I would be if she were as structured and routinized as I am. And while my father is a wonderful man, he has never been given the cognitive toolkit to critically appraise confirming and disconfirming data, scientific literature, or understand the impact and pitfalls of cognitive dissonance, logical fallacies, confirmation bias, or post-hoc reasoning/rationalization, so I need to empathize, not criticize.
Yet despite being more purposeful when I am dealing with other people through an increased degree of stoic temperance both at home and at work, I have been nothing short of an abject failure at inner-personal temperance. I have been unwise and short-sighted. I eat too many snacks and too much sweets. My dinner portions are too large. My alcohol intake has been too frequent. I don’t exercise enough. I consume more than I create. I am ambivalent. I am lazy. I am killing myself slowly and it needs to stop.
If I have learned anything the last 10 years, I have learned that seeking pleasure in the moment is short-lived and ultimately unfulfilling. Sometimes I pursue a different thing in a different place, and sometimes I pursue more of a familiar thing, but the result is always the same: all-too-brief satiety followed by emptiness. In this manner, the pursuit of pleasure requires constant effort and doesn’t even lead to contentment, much less happiness. And in a world of increasing inequality, increased war/conflict, and the impending collapse of western democracies, it is a fool’s errand.
So this is it. This is my explicit commitment to change. It is my commitment to walk the walk in all aspects of my life, not just the interpersonal. I have hired a trusted dietitian to help me with meal planning. I will eat more sensibly. I will drink less frequently. I will exercise more often. In short, I’ll be a better stoic … and hopefully a better man.