"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."– Seneca
As I’m writing this, it is the fourth of July. The country is celebrating its birthday today. At the same time, we’re just days from a debate wherein it became clear that our choices at the ballot in November will be for a doddering, tired old man or the far-right’s version of Harold Hill, which is more than a little discouraging. Understandably, people are tense. I’m afraid that whoever wins, it will potentially have disastrous consequences for us all. My wife and I had the conversation about whether to leave if candidate X wins, and for the first time it didn’t feel like hyperbole, but potentially trying to think of what we may have to do to protect our family. This is life in my country right now.
In times like this, it’s hard to listen to the stoic philosophers’ council not to worry about the future. The future feels ominous in so many ways, so shouldn’t we be looking out for what’s coming? Isn’t it irresponsible, possibly even unpatriotric not to be concerned about what’s going to happen in November? Over and over again, the stoics tell us no. “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems” Seneca writes. “If you are distressed by anything external, 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,” Marcus agrees. “When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?”- Epictetus concurs. Ultimately, this is one of the foundational principles of the philosophy. We can’t control the world. We can’t control the way people react to us or behave. We can’t even really control our own bodies to the extent we would like to. The only thing we have full control over is our thoughts, and the way we respond to the hardships that the world will inevitably throw at us.
There is, however, a finer point here than what is immediately obvious. An interpretation of this could be that the world sucks and there’s nothing to be done about it, so there’s no point in worrying or doing anything about it. So, then, if we can see that danger or hardship are coming, do we sit back and wait for it to arrive? If we’re standing on the train tracks and we hear a whistle behind us, do we shrug our shoulders and stand there waiting for the inevitable? No, of course not. We step aside off the tracks to someplace safe. This is something we have control over, a hardship we can see coming and do something to avoid. But, if somehow we’re paralyzed and lying on the tracks when we hear that whistle, this is a different situation. We can’t move out of the train’s way. No amount of worrying about the train, screaming that it’s cruel fate that the train is coming, or arguing with the conductor that it isn’t fair of them not to turn and go around you will stop that train. The ideal stoic, the perfect stoic, would accept that this is the hand fate has dealt them. They would still be sad and probably afraid, of course. No one wants to get exploded by a train. But, they would also understand that their worry against something they have no agency does nothing to solve the problem and affects exactly one person: themselves. And if it does no good, and hurts them, then there is no reason to engage in it. In fact, by not engaging in it, they may be calm enough to spot a way out that they didn’t realize was there and would have missed if they were stricken by panic.
Therein lies the difference. We do what we can, in the present moment, to do the right things, and we don’t wrack ourselves with anxiety about the things that are beyond our control. For most of us, the presidential election is beyond our ability to directly control (unless there’s a billionaire reading this substack, in which case maybe subscribe for more than the $5 minimum you cheapass.) We don’t have to sit back and do nothing. You can go out in your community and stump for your candidate of choice. You can donate to their campaigns (though it’s a shame that’s part of the process.) You can do the most important thing, vote. But sitting around wringing our hands over it does nothing to fix the problem, and makes things worse for us. It makes us miserable, makes our friends and families not want to be around us (“Oh god, Adam’s talking about Trump again. Maybe let’s go over here and see what these other people are talking about.”), and makes us less able to take care of the duties we can control in our daily lives.
I’m not very good at this, I’ll admit. I’m fighting 40+ years of habitual worrying about everything all the time. Somewhere along the way, young me decided to try and be ready for the worst at any moment so maybe he could jump in and head it off before it happened. But I’m trying, and ultimately that’s all we can do. No one is the perfect stoic, not even the people I was quoting above. But by embracing what’s within our control and not cursing the things that aren’t, we can be free of some of this worry and better able to be the people we want to be. I’ll keep working on it. Hopefully you will as well.
Thank you for reading. If you know someone who you think would appreciate writing like this or who it could potentially help, feel free to recommend the substack to them.
2 roads, is it a manageable or is it an unmanageable?
A manageable is something you can actually do to change things. You can “handle” the situation. Possibly change the outcome of something
And unmanageable, you have no control over. It doesn’t matter if you beg,plead or borrow nothing you can do will REALLY change the outcome.
You get to choose which one you focus on. You get to pick your road. The choice may seem obvious to some. But having depression,etc etc, can cause blurred lines.
Just like the 2 wolfs quote.
You have 2 wolfs,
The first.
Is happiness, control over the things YOU do, think, speak. And most importantly hope.
The 2nd
is can’t control the situation(cuz it’s not yours to control anyway) , can’t change the thing. Little to no happiness. And depression.
These wolfs fight all the time.
(This next part is my favorite part of this whole quote)
Which wolf wins/survives? (Some people say well the 1st cuz it’s happiness, it’s good! Etc etc.)
But really for anyone and everyone, it’s the wolf you feed that wins. Which wolf are you feeding.
Have very much enjoyed reading these! Hope to see more!