“Let us return again and again to the courage it takes to try and try again.”

Happiness is a by-product of virtue

The idea that true happiness is a by-product of a life pointed toward virtue is a centerpiece of Stoic endeavour. This represents a radical shift away from the pursuit of happiness, fame, wealth, success, or beauty as common targets. Earnestly setting our sights on character development and doing the right thing over “following our bliss” separates us from the herd, while it also faithfully and meaningfully binds us to others through the trust born of ethical behaviour and speech. This is true human capital.

Many students of Stoicism gravitated to this philosophy, at least in part, because we place great value on personal character and have high standards for ourselves and our dealings with other people. The Stoic connection between the pursuit of virtue as a supreme ideal and authentic human happiness makes intuitive sense once you see it play out across time and circumstance in your own life.

Many traps for the untrained mind

I recently had the pleasure of rereading Seneca’s On the Happy Life (translated by Aubrey Stewart, Vigeo Press, 2018). In this accessible essay written to his brother Gallio in 58 CE, Seneca cleanly summarizes the traps into which undisciplined minds can fall and his prescriptions for avoiding and extricating oneself should one fall. In book XX of the essay Seneca offers a kind of daily moral checklist for how to best view the world, oneself, and the tasks that lie before us.

All of his advice seems on point. For example, he enjoins us to think for ourselves, to not get yanked around by our desire for pleasure and wealth, to let go of caring what other people think of us, to remember the transitory nature of what we currently possess. His celebration of the supremacy of reason and his tonics for misguided thinking are excellent reminders of the virtue to which we aspire.

Change involves perseverence

But it’s important to say something to ourselves and to all who have been galvanized by Stoic thought lest any of us become demoralized in our Stoic journeys. The effort to transform the way we think, feel, speak, and act is arduous work. Your life doesn’t change a jot just from reading Seneca’s or any other philosopher’s writings, no matter how compelling their message. Change is something we do. And do over and over and over. It involves routine, perseverance, trial and error, disappointment, frustration, confusion, failure, and just falling short. In fact, we will always fall short, because the Stoic project is a lifelong incremental chain of character upgrades that involve stepping out into the unknown and the untried.

Our perceptions are unreliable

Marcus Aurelius averred that if we are distressed about something “the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” This statement is a profound reminder of the faultiness of our impressions of events or of the motives and feelings of other people. What Marcus tells us makes perfect sense. It is not hard to see how we hurt ourselves and others because of the unreliability of our own perceptions and judgments. We can love Marcus’ idea that we can “revoke the power at any moment” of our estimate of something, knowing this estimate is the very thing that blinds us along the path of virtue. Still, down here on the street in our real lives it can at times feel nearly impossible to withdraw or even eradicate our mis-seeings. Our brains have a huge stake in perpetuating the way they apprehend reality for good or for ill.

Our minds and hearts are also heavily invested in the stories we have told ourselves and others for years about what is true or false and what is valuable or not. Seeking to realign our words and deeds in the direction of virtue can depend on our willingness and ability to throw out the old narratives to make room for the new. Again, this can sound facile on paper. In real life it is very hard to do this.

Let us return to the courage to try and try again

This is why I believe we owe it to ourselves and others to give credit where credit is due to our recurring efforts to elevate our character. The credit belongs to our doings, to our sincerely trying to do better and be better. We live in a culture that focusses on results, outcomes, and their metrics. Epictetus and his ilk repeatedly tell us, “Remember? You can’t control outcomes. You can’t control externals.” So let us return again and again to the courage it takes to try and try again.

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Sharon Lebell is the author of The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness, the first modern interpretation of Epictetus’ teachings.

 

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