Stoicism as an antidote to anxiety
I recently re-read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius during a period of personal angst and confusion. The Stoic way of thinking proved to be a resource of immense value for overcoming — and continuing to overcome — these daily, minute challenges of life.
Stoicism is analogous to the teachings of Buddhism, perhaps you could say that it is a Western interpretation of Buddhism. The Stoics recognise the reality and presence of material things. Yet they claim that anything outside of ourselves is irrelevant because ultimately we retain autonomy over our own response to each external stimuli, and that makes all the difference. In Meditations Marcus Aurelius writes that “today I escaped from all bothering circumstances — or rather I threw them out. They were nothing external, but inside me, just my own judgements”. This is empowering. Nobody can ever rob you of your own judgement (something Victor Frankl maintained helped him survive the destitution of the Nazi concentration camps) irrespective of your external circumstances. In a similar vein, Marcus Aurelius later states that “if your distress has some external cause, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgement of it — and you can erase this immediately”.
The Stoics also resemble the Buddhists in the neutrality of their emotional responses. Adopting a Stoic attitude to life involves neither pessimism nor optimism, but a detached neutrality. Their objective, pragmatic interpretation of reality reduces any room for self-pity, and instead allows the subjective observer to leverage his own judgement of reality to work to his benefit. This can be a useful way of seeing the bigger picture of things when we may be wallowing in the depths of our suffering and mental turmoil.
I acknowledge that I have everything to be grateful for. I am insanely fortunate with how good my life is and has been. Yet I do not think this privilege negates exposure to — or especially compassion for — the psychological challenges and mental frailties that life inevitably entails (some of it self-induced, others forced upon us involuntarily).
As such, Book 8 of Meditations should be recommended reading for anyone seeking to overcome personal difficulties — it simply oozes wisdom and assurance throughout. Meditations can be a tough read, certainly initially, as one seeks to grasp the sometimes abstract and inaccessible language used by Marcus Aurelius. But after a brief immersion of reading, interpreting and understanding the underlying points of his meditations becomes seamless. In fact, it becomes joyous.
The Ithaca Diaries
