As of late, stoic philosophies have become a pretty trendy topic. I wouldn’t consider myself a fanatic, but I’ve done my fair share of reading. There's more books on the subject than you can count, and frankly, it makes sense. It feels like we’re bombarded by other people, technology and our own heads around the clock, every day of every year. Sometimes we can tune it out to white noise, but understanding what to react to is as important as ever.
When we picture stoicism we might picture the snow monkey: at complete peace in a hot spring despite some heavy snowfall around it. A classic example of the complete opposite picture might be former US president Theodore Roosevelt. He almost died exploring a river in the Amazon, tried to enlist as a soldier in the First World War at the age of 59, and killed 11,397 animals on a safari in Africa. Accomplished, but impulsive. It becomes difficult to grasp the relative importance of your actions when you’re carrying them out before you can even think.
Now, I’m not saying we should be running around like lunatics, but I think we’re missing the mark on basic stoicism. There’s a great book by Ryan Holiday called The Daily Stoic that sums it up well:
“The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t.”
In aiming to be stoic, we tend to focus too much on what we can’t change and not enough on what we can. In short, our take on stoicism often seems to be one centered around non-reactivity. We're not wrong for thinking this, and it’s an important skill to have; per Ryan’s quote, a large part of the stoic belief system is centered around understanding what you can't control and remaining indifferent to it. The problem is when people take this too far and misinterpret that as being non-reactive to everything around them.
Stoicism is not complacency. There's a difference between understanding external factors we have no influence over and remaining indifferent as a lifestyle. Instead we should be identifying things we do have control over and choosing to act aggressively and decisively on them. We can't always be monkeys in hot springs, as nice as that would be. Stoicism is not the art of being unbothered. It’s about knowing when to act.
Until tomorrow,
Alex