How To Stop Feeling Numb
The term stoic is defined as “a person who can endure pain and hardship without showing their feelings or complaining.”
By this typical usage, the idea of a stoic philosophy suggests a way of thinking that leads people to quash their feelings altogether. Philosophy has that effect regardless. After all, the topic is quite dry on the surface, indicating a delicate machinery of logic and rationale and seriousness.
It begs the question: have you ever met a happy philosopher? I most certainly have not. The few I’ve met are bookish, brooding, and a bit unkempt. Like me, they need to clean their eyeglasses.
So the idea of a stoic philosophy can easily lead one to think that practitioners are as stony as the marble busts of their forefathers. It’s a faulty impression. The author William Irvine helps us overcome it with his 2008 book A Guide To The Good Life: The Art of Stoic Joy. He begins in the opening pages by channeling the wisdom of one of its most famous practitioners:
Seneca said if one wishes to practice Stoicism, they must learn to feel joy.
That last phrase, learn to feel joy, surprised me when I first read it. Emotions must be learned? Does that mean they can be unlearned?
