Stoics taught, along with the Epicureans, that we should limit our desires, and that perceived problems in life are due to errors in judgement about those problems. If we change our attitude, the pain of those external factors can disappear. I’d say it’s a must-read for anyone who reads a lot. If you don’t read much (books, articles etc), it’ll still be useful (because you definitely consume some sort of content). We are so embroiled in the rhetoric of self-belief that to apply any qualifications to the mantra of ‘Go on! You can do anything!’ seems to be actively denying people their chance of happiness. Yet when we warn, ‘This may not work out’, we are being, at heart, very supportive. We are asking the person to set aside, for a moment, their single-minded, emotive image of happiness (opening a coffee shop). We are reminding them that their overarching happiness is in fact independent of a successful café venture. We are not naysaying. We are pointing to a potentially deeper level of happiness and saying, ‘If this doesn’t work out, as it may not, irrespective of your enthusiasm, there is more in life that can make you happy. Don’t attach too much to this one goal.’ Establishing Goals

So let’s look a little closer at what those things are that do not fall under our control. The feeling of letting them go is enormously liberating, so we want to make sure we can confidently reap the benefits without doing ourselves (or others) a disservice by ignoring anything that’s important. Composure, calmness and charity is nowhere near as kind and considerate and inoffensive to those who come across it as to those who possess it.’53 We are ultimately made happier by being less angry, in fact happier than we’ll make other people. Our aim is to improve our happiness; we needn’t feel ashamed about this point. Psychologists have demonstrated that people gain more pleasure from acting altruistically than being on the receiving ends of such acts.54 Far from undermining the point of kindness, this serves as a reminder that it’s good for us.While the evolutionary advantages of status are self-evident, it’s fascinating to me that despite our extraordinarily well-honed social radars, and the importance and appeal of getting on with people and being liked, we make such gross errors as thinking that being ‘impressive’ (in this least interesting sense) will make people like us. Two thousand years ago, a Roman slave called Epictetus, a prominent figure in the ancient school of Stoic philosophy, which remained the most prevalent school of thought for five hundred years before Christianity exploded into the world, gave voice to the notion: ‘What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgements about these things.’1 In other words, it is not events out there that cause our problems but rather our reactions to them: the stories we tell ourselves. Milan Kundera made the enduring point in The Unbearable Lightness of Being that there is no dress rehearsal for life. This is life; this is it, right now. It is a powerful and motivating thought. Add your Permanent Notes to your Slip-Box. File each one behind (or under) one or more related notes. Add links to related notes. And make sure you can find your notes later, by linking to them from your index, or from your topic notes. Seneca writes: Some men, it is true, have not only just but honourable reasons for standing against us: one is protecting a father, another a brother, another his country, another a friend; however, we do not pardon these for doing the very thing which we would blame them for not doing.42 No one says to himself, ‘I myself have done or could have done the thing that is making me angry now’.

It is undoubtedly excellent to strive to achieve one’s maximum potential, but that should be to please ourselves, not be judged by others, and for me having led a ‘good-enough’ life with its share of wonders and disasters, I am content and so, ready for a ‘good-enough’ death. Suppose you woke up one morning to discover that you were the last person on earth: during the night, aliens had spirited away everyone but you. Suppose that despite the absence of other people, the world’s buildings, houses, stores, and roads remained as they had been the night before. Cars were where their now-vanished owners had parked them, and gas for these cars was plentiful at now-unattended gas stations. The electricity still worked. It would be a world like this world, except that everyone but you was gone. You would, of course, be very lonely, but let us ignore the emotional aspects of being the last person, and instead focus our attention on the material aspects. In the situation described, you could satisfy many material desires that you can’t satisfy in our actual world. You could have the car of your dreams. You could even have a showroom full of expensive cars. You could have the house of your dreams – or live in a palace. You could wear very expensive clothes. You could acquire not just a big diamond ring but the Hope Diamond itself. The interesting question is this: without people around, would you still want these things? Would the material desires you harbored when the world was full of people still be present in you if other people vanished? Probably not. Without anyone else to impress, why own an expensive car, a palace, fancy clothes, or jewelry?

If we hope for something deeper in life than distraction, we might note that our remembering, story-forming self needs a narrative of happiness in the same way our experiencing self requires its pleasures. And here we might find that we sleep more peacefully if we see our lives as part of Aristotle’s telos, as a work in progress, one in which we could view daily irritations as a kind of test; one which teaches us virtue and where we can, step by step, and by considering the variables of each situation as it happens, move towards being a better (happier, kinder, more fulfilled) version of ourselves. Living a “Considered Life” This is typical of the Stoics’ aligning of themselves with fate (that is, whatever the world throws at them), but it also should inform our first impressions and stop us from interpreting events in such a way that makes us feel worse. Thus most people would not begrudge Madonna her placement at the top of the Forbes celebrity rich list for 2013 (though her peers well might), but they may seethe quietly at a colleague’s pay-rise or a friend’s new house.

If we are feeling angry, upset or hurt, it’s understandable, but we have forgotten ourselves. It may be unavoidable that we will feel some of these negative emotions, perhaps every day, but there is all the difference in the world between allowing them to take root (which comes from believing they are caused by external events and leads to us holding others accountable for our feelings) and accepting responsibility for them, and seeing if we might correct them internally.There is more to Epicurus’s advice. He reminds us to desire what we already have, rather than to desire more and more unnecessary things: ‘Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; Of course it is harder to get excited about a future event if we keep reminding ourselves it might not happen. We’re so indoctrinated against the idea of pessimism that it might seem as if we are actively denying ourselves a source of happiness through this exceptio. But consider the alternative. When we become very excited about a future event, we forget the present and place ourselves in the future. We are at the mercy of something outside of our control: whether or not the event happens as we would wish. It may turn out to be better than expected, or roughly the same, or worse. The more excited we are, the more likely it is to fail to meet our expectations, in the same way that something we dread is likely to not be half as bad as we feared.

Is this thing that’s upsetting me something which lies under my control? If not, what if I were to decide it’s fine and let it go? The Epicureans of the Garden chose to pursue pleasures and avoid pain. Yet pleasures were rationally chosen, so that they would not ultimately lead to misery. The point was to achieve happiness, which was identical to a life of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Aristotle was interested in how we might be good, rather than know goodness. Thus when he taught ethics, his aim was to improve the lives of his pupils at a practical, everyday level. If we were the last person on Earth, we wouldn’t bother with buffetless ventilators or ironic iPhone cases. When the desire to impress others is removed, we live a more authentically Epicurean existence. And again, we should not make the mistake of thinking that Epicurus would deny us such things as a fancy fan. Instead, he would have us not cultivate the need for such things in the first place, so that the pain of losing them when they are broken, lost or stolen would not compromise any enjoyment we might obtain from them in the meantime. Anything on the other side of the line – anything other than our thoughts and actions – we can safely decide is fine.Take Literature Notes when reading. Highlight stuff and write down stuff that resonates with you. Try to take these notes in your own words. Yes, you might just be paraphrasing from the text for its own sake, but the extra effort is worth it. Remembering this invites us to express our feelings to those we love now while we can, to never take them for granted, and to not regret, when it’s too late, that they never knew how important they were to us. “What You Love is Mortal” His aim, then, is not to avoid those he doesn’t like but to find a way around the clashing of personalities and achieve a harmonious relationship with all people. We must remember this if Stoicism ever seems detached and cold to us. Its ultimate aim is not an emotionless detachment from others but is rather about living in harmony with what the ancients called ‘Nature’ and being a productive part of humankind. And rather than control our partner to pander to our needs, we might begin to celebrate him or her as an entire, separate human being, one with some disappointing peculiarities it is up to us to navigate, accommodate, forgive. What we Can’t Control Do not seek to have events happen to you as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.51