The art of showing up 

I practice yoga everyday, and probably do it wrong, but I show up and do it anyway, no matter what. It makes me better. Same with Stoicism. I approximate, I show up, I try. Every day. I hold an ethical ideal out in front of myself and try to move forward an inch toward that lodestar. “Done is better than good,” and other productivity mantras get me to the mat and to my journal where I contemplate a Stoic virtue and resolve to embody it for the day ahead. 

We do our best 

All our efforts at summoning the better part of our natures are approximate. We try. We just do the best we can with who we are in the current moment and circumstance. 

This sounds meager to that malevolent overachiever who lives in our heads. But he’s an idiot and a punk. Browbeating is the only thing at which he excels. Our tiny unsure advances toward our best self and our best life are where our potency lie and are the locus of the meaning we make out of the material life offers up. 

Let’s hear it for trying and our small, steady victories, however imperceptible they seem in isolation. In the aggregate they are mighty and give rise to people who are better citizens, leaders, parents, friends, students, and community members. Those dinky doings form the matrix of a civilized society, one worth living in. 

Expressing the Stoic vision 

As modern Stoics and people who want to be “better” we get to experiment with new ways of expressing the Stoic vision of a life well-lived. This is where yoga comes in for me. It’s a perfect complement to Stoicism’s wisdom from the neck up. Yoga provides embodied neck-down wisdom. 

For example, one of Stoicism’s pillars is the rational check of our passions. Stoicism teaches me that were I to allow my impulses and passions of the moment to drive my thoughts, words, and deeds, my life and the lives I touch would be a mess. But knowing that isn’t enough (above-the-neck wisdom). I need to do my yoga to settle my mind and redirect my body out of fight or flight and other forms of reactivity so that equanimity and clear seeing are possible. Yoga’s embodied wisdom is my foundation for pointing each day toward Virtue and the possibility of eudaimonia. 

Broader vision is no less Stoic 

I imagine a lot of students of Stoicism are like me practicing various hybrid and no less legitimate approaches to the good life, combining additional ethical, philosophical, spiritual, and religious practices with Stoicism. I look forward to more discussion about this, because I imagine that most practitioners of modern Stoicism bring their formative ethical, cultural, or religious experiences with them to their engagement with Stoic principles. I know I do. The Stoicism I practice is not monolithic but porous and welcoming. Let’s talk about those other teachings or traditions that augment your Stoic practices. And, in the meantime, let’s keep moving forward an inch day by day towards our better selves. 

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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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