Let’s get back to basics. 

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. 

 

 

So begins my interpretation of Epictetus’ manual for living, the Enchiridion. When people ask what Stoicism is, I always return to this essential teaching For if we fully embrace this precept, our lives can instantly and enduringly change for the better. Suffering, dysfunction and insanity are inevitable outcomes of obsessing over or otherwise focussing on trying to manipulate or change that which you can’t control. 

However, there is a problem with this sorting of life into the two piles of what we can control and what we can’t. We don’t know what we don’t know. In other words, unless we are willing to be deeply curious about our motivations, vanities, and fears, that which “makes us tick,” we don’t have anything meaningful to sort into those two piles from which to act accordingly. 

Our life is guided by our thinking in metaphors 

Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson is a brilliant investigation of the powerful yet largely unseen metaphors that organize our perceptions, ambitions, inter-pretations, conclusions about what is true and what isn’t or what is valuable and what isn’t. These embedded cognitive organizing principles are what marshal our actions. They are the ways we understand and navigate our moments. 

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical.” A classic example of a metaphor some live by: An argument is a war. Many of us consciously or not embrace this metaphor. We approach argument as war: the other party is seen as an enemy whose position should be vanquished. We “attack” the “opponent’s” position. But arguments are not necessarily or intrinsically wars. Arguments are merely verbal discourse between parties with different interests. Do we want to view argument as war? Is it true? Is it useful? 

What does this all mean? If we are to honestly investigate ourselves and the circumstances of our lives to determine what we in fact control and what we don’t, we have to first disinter the metaphors that have taken up tacit residence inside us. 

Beware, metaphors can mislead us 

I realized that for years I operated from a metaphor probably inherited from my parents whose own ways of thinking were likely shaped by ancestral trauma. I call it “life is an old rickety boat.” This boat is always developing holes that must be patched lest it sink. A good day would be when I “kept my head above water.” Or when I didn’t have “that sinking feeling.” If this just seems like language play, it’s not. I was never thinking about boats per se. Still, my actions were organized around preventing my “ship” from sinking. I was always running around trying to, in some sense, keep my boat from developing leaks. Everything I did was to prevent or postpone the dire possibility of sinking altogether. Well, that makes for a pretty frantic and miserable life. Picture it: my primary stance was defensive (not creative), fearful (not curious), overly vigilant (bereft of trust), running around so to speak with duct tape and putty trying to prevent misfortune or calamity. When I came to see this metaphor’s existence, I was able to examine it in the light of day and decide whether it was true or useful. It was neither, and I pitched it. 

There is too little space here for a full explanation of the hold metaphor has on our imagination. The important message is to remember that we inhabit metaphors and they inhabit us. They steer us. And the reason we should care is that they disguise themselves as the true parameters of existence, as “the way things really are.” Above all, we actually have control over the metaphors that structure our thinking and behavior if we are willing to do the necessary investigative work to identify them. 

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Sharon Lebell is the author of The Art of Living and is a member of our Advisory Board.

 

 

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