Starting with the morning challenge               

Sometimes, it can even be a challenge to get out of bed. It might have been hard even for Marcus Aurelius:

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do?’ - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.1

A very interesting thing here, I think, is that Marcus makes use of a concept of something like a role in order to face some challenge, albeit a rather mundane one. I’ve long thought that the concept of roles is an important concept in Stoicism.

The roles we play

The thought that we all play different roles, and that the roles influence what we ought and ought not do tends to put things in perspective, which can be highly useful when we face some kind of difficulty. The role of a human being is to be a social and rational being, “to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1). 

I think that ideas like these have a utility that extends far beyond just getting out of bed. Whenever we do deal with adversity –  which is to varying degrees, several times a day  –  reflecting on our role and function as a human being can save us from self-pity, anger, and other harmful emotions.

While I do think that our role as human beings is and ought to be the dominant role we play, it is quite possible and probably beneficial to attempt to flesh out some of the other roles we play in life. Some of them we choose more or less ourselves, like a profession, a student of a specific discipline, a friend to some specific person, and so on. Others are not, such as being the son or daughter of a specific set of parents, being born in a certain country, or the previously mentioned role as a human being. 

The more minor roles can also help us to deal with adversity, and Epictetus has an excellent example of someone who did just that. The senator and Stoic, Helvidius Priscus had been asked by the emperor Vespasian to not attend a senate meeting, to which Priscus replied  “It lies in your power not to allow me to be a senator, but as long as I remain one, I have to attend its meetings”. When Vespasian asked him to at least keep quiet, and Priscus refused, Vespasian threatened him with execution if he did speak up, to which Priscus replied “Well, when have I ever claimed to you that I’m immortal? You fulfill your role, and I’ll fulfill mine. It is yours to have me killed, and mine to die without a tremor; it is yours to send me into exile, and mine to depart without a qualm.” (Epictetus, Discourses, 2.2)

Playing our parts well as our goal

We see here an excellent way that we can use one of our roles to deal with adversity, and to set things in the proper perspective. Furthermore, if we learn to consider playing our parts well to be our proper goal, a lot of the adversities of life become much more manageable. Dealing with difficult people, death, sickness, and the darker parts of our own psyches are challenges that we will probably have to deal with for as long as we are alive. It is, however, possible to consider our proper good to be playing our roles well, and that a part of that is to learn how to deal with the different challenges that life throws at us. This will not make all the things that most people consider to be adversities disappear, but it will make it easier to deal with them.

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