The Modern Stoic.
In control over one’s emotional response.
A few years ago we had quite the family tragedy with the loss of my sister. It was nothing unexpected but it was a ten-year-long journey to a definitive end. Understandably it was a rough decade for the whole family.
My response when it was all over was to wonder what I should do with all the new “free time” I suddenly had without the stress of the situation. I have never been more delusional. I thought that the loss of my sister meant that all the lost energy would come back to serve me.
So I thought it good to start another company and dive deep into work. After a couple of years with twelve to fourteen hour days, six days a week, successfully hiding from my emotions I broke.
Now it’s about five years later and I’m still working on putting the pieces back together. But I don’t look back at my choices or these past years with sorrow, I can now rejoice over what I found in the depths of my mind.
My mind needed answers I didn't have, my mind had to evolve and mature to answer these new life-changing questions. (As I think your mind works in times of crisis, you either lay down forever or you evolve to something more, someone wiser.)
After a year in a continuous state of “fight or flight”, I finally conjured the strength to visit a therapist. (Cognitive behavioral therapy). In parallel, I learned the foundation of stoicism. I discovered several similarities. This therapy had some of its foundation in this amazing philosophy.
I also learned that I had developed into a stoic as part of my defense to handle this decade of sorrow. When learning about it I found the philosophy a bit outdated. A quite normal view of stoicism is that it’s for the emotionally cold and distant. And they are not completely wrong, in the extreme, the stoic would theoretically be unaffected by the loss of a family member.
But I think it’s like with most philosophies, you present the most extreme version to set a goal to strive for. I think very few could be unaffected by something so tragically.
From my findings, I would like to present some of the strengths I found in stoicism that I believe are suited to the modern person.
Stoicism could be explained as a set of virtuous ideals and as an attitude to life. I consider stoicism more like guidelines to a life in control of one’s emotions than rules for living. In this text, I formulate my take on stoicism and how I think it should affect the mind of the modern human.
The Modern Stoic.
The Stoics are bound to rational thought. Rationality triumphs emotion. She understands and expects all things, good as bad. She is not emotionally affected by the outcome since it’s expected. She is therefore carefree from that outside her control.
A person fully responsible for her own, chosen responsibilities and actions. She understands what’s within and without her control. She is therefore a person in control of her emotional response. The stoic is in a way, free.
Free from the burden of choice. For she chooses her values by reason and accepts her chosen responsibilities and therefore any action becomes natural. Any consequence is expected.
Free from the burden of her environment. She understands that most of the world lies outside her control and she will not be burdened by it.
Free from the opinions of others. She is content with her values and morals.
Free from suspicion. Ask her what she is thinking. Her thoughts are full of virtue and she could share them instantly since her mind is pure in thought regarding her morals.
Free from perfection. As Marcus Aurelius once wrote “Nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result”. (Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations) The stoic understands the balance between good and bad in nature.
Free from emotional pain. For she understands that she chooses her vulnerability. But she does not diminish the lessons learned in pain and irrational emotion. She grows in the task of prevailing over pain.
The modern stoic in contrast to the more ancient and “emotionally cold” stoic, know that she grows mentally due to emotional challenges. The lessons learned in pain are not to be diminished.
The tool of the stoic. The modern stoic practices self-control. She knows the value and has the control to decline short-term gratification to advantage for long-term gain.
And lastly, something I think most of us would benefit from understanding, as the stoic most likely does. The only way to grow in the eyes of others is by looking inwards and working on becoming a more virtuous person with defined values. Others won’t stick around because you need them to or because you have that high-paying job. They stick around if they find you to be an authentic person in-line with good values.
In essence, the stoic lives in peace with her values and always strive to be virtuous. And that is something only you can decide to strive for.
To summarize I would say that the stoic is free in regards to his or her values.
That would mean that when in “perfection”, she is only herself in regards to her own, preferably defined, values. Striving to be a stoic, is in a way a means to be striving for discovery and control over one’s self. Formulating what it is to be you. To the question of “Who are you?”. The stoic would have an answer.
Thanks for reading, I will leave you with the clip I watched when my journey towards stoicism began.
Best Regards, Robin
