Adversity and other people

Many people incorporate Stoic principles and practices into their life in order to help them understand and deal with the challenges, setbacks, disappointments, and problems they either encounter or envisage.  Those modes of adversity often stem from one’s involvements with other people. 

No man is an island

One recurring theme to classic Stoic philosophy corresponds well to the later-coined proverb that “no man is an island.” Like other ancient virtue ethicists, Stoics tell us that human beings are social creatures, and that this is both reflective of and stems from the defining trait of the sort of animals we are, namely rational ones.  

We exist, most of us, within complex fabrics of relationships with other people, connected to us by a variety of roles. Even those who live lives of isolation and solitude may experience their social nature precisely by what is missing in their lives, the lacking or lapsed connections with others.

We don’t all choose our relationships

Some of those relationships we have are not really results of our choice. We just happen to be someone’s children or grandchildren, neighbours, co-workers, or classmates. Other relationships are products of our choices and commitments, like relationships with friends, romantic partners, business partners, and to some degree our children. (You can certainly decide whether to have children, but you don’t have as much control as people often assume over how they turn out.)  Whatever relationships we find ourselves in, however, we do have choices about what we make of them, how we understand them, and whether or not we fulfill the duties that go along with them.

If we are trying to live our lives as Stoics, interconnected with other people, one potential source of adversity lies precisely in what happens with and to the people we care about. Since we’re all mortal, limited, rather messed-up human beings, the same things that can go wrong with our own lives can go wrong with theirs. 

The externals we get concerned about, despite those matters lacking the genuine goodness of virtue and the things that participate in it, those other people are likely even more concerned over. 

Making money or just getting by, illnesses and pains, pleasures one hopes to enjoy, opportunities and social status, opinions of other people, disappointments and losses, just to name a few, these are the sorts of matters that occupy most people. Whether right or wrong about this, their happiness or misery becomes dependent on such matters largely residing outside of their control.

The adversity people face may be unnecessary

It is naturally hard for us when we see those we care about focusing their attention on, placing their own care and concern onto, hitching their happiness to what the Stoics call externals or indifferents. This is especially so when we see them experiencing the consequences of tying their emotional states, their judgments and opinions, their desires and aversions into whether or not they enjoy what they view as success in these matters.  The adversity they experience might be unnecessary and the product of mistaken views, but that doesn’t mean at all that what they feel isn’t real, that it doesn’t affect them. And when we see things going badly for them, these people we are close to, their adversity can become our adversity as well.

Watching my own family members and friends struggle with the troubles entailed by jobs, bosses, and co-workers, friendships and romantic relationships, health issues, scares, and crises, money problems and worries, disappointments and distractions, witnessing all this, I’ll admit that it is easy to be tempted into thinking one can and should do more than is really possible for them. 

Indifference to others is not the Stoic way

It’s also easy to overact to this realization of the vulnerability of those we care about to this same tough, confusing, messy world we live in. A student of Stoicism might mistakenly think the right response is to withdraw our own affection, our concern, our involvement from people we are close to, so when they get hurt, we don’t have to feel hurt ourselves. But if we look at examples and teachings provided by the classic Stoics, indifference to others isn’t remotely how they would suggest we deal with their travails and difficulties. We can of course, when it might prove helpful, provide them with advice, consolation, or even Stoic teachings. But more often what they need is us to fulfill the specific duties of our roles towards them. And to fulfill a much more universal duty, that of a human being, just being there for them when they need us, as they deal as best they currently can with the adversities they run into.

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