When things move fast

On April 30th of 2023, I didn’t know my wife, I had no children, and I lived in the United States. Today, I’m married to my wife, have a baby due in a few weeks, and live in the United Kingdom. You might think, as you count the months between then and now on your fingers, “wow, that’s a strangely large amount of change in a strangely short period of time.” 

Were you here with me, at the charming little Newcastle coffee shop I’m writing to you from, I would respond, “you don’t know the half of it” and proceed to regale you with such a dizzying array of seemingly-impossible details you might fall over into your Earl Grey tea (black, of course) before getting a chance to enjoy it – and that would be a shame.

Change has consequences

Change, when you’re lucky, is wonderful – but it never arrives without consequences. Winning the lottery, unexpectedly finding your life partner, being chosen for a new job you never thought you’d get, all of these sorts of things demand a lot out of you in the aftermath of their happening. 

You must work to be an adept sailor who knows when it is appropriate to row, which direction it is to attempt to row in, and, above all, when it is appropriate to pull the oars in and let that sea push you around a bit.

This is, probably, doubly true when the change isn’t what you’d consider positive (when your house burns down, when you go bankrupt, when you lose a job, etc). However, even when it seems like the opposite, change is progress to the Ancient Stoics. 

Being prokoptôn

Prokoptôn are those who are progressing toward (in Stoicism) the possessing of a particular kind of knowledge (which we know as Virtue) – those who are progressing towards sagehood.

Where then is progress? If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals, turns to his own will to exercise it and to improve it by labour, so as to make it conformable to nature, elevated, free, unrestrained, unimpeded, faithful, modest; and if he has learned that he who desires or avoids the things which are not in his power can neither be faithful nor free, but of necessity he must change with them and be tossed about with them as in a tempest, and of necessity must subject himself to others who have the power to procure or prevent what he desires or would avoid; finally, when he rises in the morning, if he observes and keeps these rules, bathes as a man of fidelity, eats as a modest man; in like manner, if in every matter that occurs he works out his chief principles as the runner does with reference to running, and the trainer of the voice with reference to the voice – this is the man who truly makes progress, and this is the man who has not traveled in vain. - Epictetus, Discourses 1.4

The progress of prokoptôn

When the Ancient Stoics speak of progress, they mean the progress of Prokoptôn and nothing else. When they speak of change, they mean all the things that happen to us – whether perceived as positive or negative. Our house burning down is as much an example of beneficial change as is finally passing our driving test, in that both of these events are change and it is change which enable the exercise of progress. Why? Because change provides the space within which we can move, or the canvas on which we can paint – it is where the rubber of theory meets the road of practice. If change didn’t happen, Prokoptôn couldn’t progress.

So when Epictetus says, “…of necessity he must change with them and be tossed about with them as in a tempest, and of necessity must subject himself to others who have the power to procure or prevent what he desires or would avoid…” he means progress towards Virtue is exactly made by riding the waves of change rather than fighting them – but also, that progress will be absolutely trammelled by resisting change in any way (though I want to draw a distinction between not resisting change and rising to meet it; Epictetus isn’t telling us not to rise to meet our challenges).

Change and you, the progressing Stoic

As a Stoic worth their salt (which I’m sure you are), you must look at all change, whether it seems positive or negative in nature to you, differently as most others do. You must see change as the seas upon which you are sailing, and you must work to be an adept sailor who knows when it is appropriate to row, which direction it is to attempt to row in, and, above all, when it is appropriate to pull the oars in and let that sea push you around a bit.

Tanner Campbell hosts the Practical Stoicism Podcast and is the author of the upcoming book, What Is Stoicism? (New World Library, Fall 2024), which he co-authored with Kai Whiting. For more information, go to tannercampbell.net.

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