Hey guys,
I've been reading a lot of the stuff here in the Off-Topic forum and it seems like many of you have to fight to keep the mental health in order. This isn't really surprising in that we're currently enjoying the fruits of COVID and the fact that the people here tend to be intelligent. Intelligent people have imagination. Imagination - unless you learn how to use it properly - is a great way to make yourself feel depressed, hopeless and impotent.
So, before I explain what has worked for me, a little background. I am not and never have been chemically depressed. When I was fighting with depression it was from outside factors. For me, these were living on the edge of homelessness for several years, a steady stream of credible death threats against my family members, family members experiencing frequent or long-lasting psychotic breaks, loved ones mutilating themselves and a string of pretty brutal betrayals by people I'd trusted. I am not a psychologist and I'm not a pharmacologist. My work is in education and my area of expertise is philosophy of education. I'm not claiming to be an expert on mental health. I am claiming to be a resilient son of a bitch and, more to the point, I am claiming that stoicism helped me to become resilient.
Stoicism as a mature school of philosophy is not about suppressing emotions or never smiling. Instead, it is an ethical system predicated on the following principles:
1. Happiness is the state of circumstance exceeding expectation. If, for example, you expect to be kidnapped by terrorists but instead have a normal day at work, you will feel grateful and happy.
2. Unhappiness is the state of circumstance lagging behind expectation. If, for example, you expect to win the lotterry but instead have a normal day at work, you will feel cheated and resentful.
3. The only legitimate targets of expectation are the things in our control. We might set expectations about our thoughts, our ways of interpreting the world, our orientations and our desires because these things are completely within our control.
4. Things out of our control are not legitimate targets of expectation and lead only to despair. We should not set expectations of other people, of the stock market, of human rights or freedoms or dignities or comforts. We should not expect cardiovascular health or long lives. We should not expect admiration or justice because these things are not within our control.
5. Since circumstance is outside our control, we should expect nothing of it. Since expectations are within our control, we ought to discipline and hone them. Being happy, therefore, is the art of expecting nothing of the world and much of oneself.
For me, the path to stoicism started from an intense anger at the world. I looked at the shoes I'd repaired four times, the blue jeans with holes in the crotches and the dumpsters I'd been diving and hated people who were living well. I hated the ways they assumed me stupid, I hated them for hiding the women and sneaking inside to warn the neighbors, I wanted to punish them for failing to embody the equality, freedom and human rights garbage I'd learned to expect in school. I hated these people for failing to meet my bullE36 M3 expectations for about 3 years before a thought dawned on me.
"I'm subhuman."
I didn't mean this in an emo sort of way. It was not a synonym for "everything sucks" and it wasn't a cry for help. It was a recognition that the "human rights, equality and dignity all human beings are entitled to" didn't apply to me. It wasn't until later I discovered those things don't apply to anyone, and therefore everyone was "subhuman," but even an imperfect rejection of "the way things should be" went miles in improving the quality of my life. Marcus Aurelius, dying slowly in a German swamp, said the same thing much more elegantly.
“Calm acceptance of what comes from a cause outside yourself, and justice in all activity of your own causation.”
This rejection of "the way it ought to be" releases so many burdens it's difficult to express in writing. There is no imperative to hate evil doers for "doing what they ought not." There is no sense in hating corporations or governments or oppressors. If you prefer to change them, go for it, as long as you remember it is mere preference and that there are lots of things we prefer and can't have. There is, as Marcus says, a calm acceptance of the things outside yourself. There is, with practice, an ability to love what is rather than wasting time on fantasies of what should be.
And when "should" ceases to exist, forgiveness becomes easy. The burning righteousness, the impotent flailing, the pathetic wishing after a better world, we can replace that stuff with gratitude for what we have. We can stop looking at our families, our pets, our possessions as things we need or are entitled to and start looking at them as unearned gifts on temporary loan from a universe that owes us nothing. It teaches us to expect death and, in doing so, let go of fear. It teaches us that we are all, fundamentally, playing with house money.
I hope you all have a great Christmas,
Ben
