Inside The Diary of a Stoic

Just two weeks ago, the world watched in complete awe as Space X launched two American astronauts into space, a historic achievement for the company and for America’s future space project. While launching rockets into space is something routine for Nasa and Space X, watching the event got me thinking quite differently. In the hours that followed, as we waited with bated breath for astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to dock at the International Space Station (ISS), a journey of approximately nineteen hours, I watched countless videos of space, rocket launches, stories about extraterrestrial civilization, you name it. The more I watched the videos and got more live pictures of space (as captured by the Hubble Telescope), the more I got in touch with my stoic instincts. It’s a big universe out there, and we are just some little creatures scurrying around on a rock as it hurtles through space. Anyone who understands the sheer scale of the universe will appreciate why stoicism is perhaps the best philosophy of living as we wade through turbulent vanities of this tiny rock we call home.

Stoicism originated in ancient Greece and was perfected in ancient Rome. However, the ideas of stoicism, as taught by Seneca and Aurelius still have a lot of urgent things to teach us today. For example, through stoicism, we get to learn how to achieve resilience and emotional stability. The ideas of stoicism are always at the center of any attempt to remain serene in the midst of a turbulent, unpredictable, and often mean-minded world. Stoics always imagine the worst that could happen, and then plan and imagine how to survive; especially if they cannot change the outcomes. Seneca advocated for things like “planned poverty” and “planned misery,” that way when the worst comes to pass, we are already prepped on how to survive and cope. This is something priceless.

Occasionally, stoics may wear very cheap clothes and even go hungry on purpose, not because they can’t afford the Louis Vuittons of this world, but as a way of making sure that they have lived it all. Should the worst come to pass, it will not be a shock to such people. Now that’s what we call mental fortitude. 

 “It’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgment of things.” This powerful statement uttered by Epictetus who was an ancient Greek philosopher captures the core of stoicism. Shakespeare had a somewhat similar idea in mind when he said, “Nothing Neither Good nor Bad, But Thinking Makes it so.” What these two statements confer is that events are objective, and the world is what it is. We decide that something was hurtful, we decide that something is unfair, we decide what these things mean, and we tell ourselves stories and narratives laced with judgments, and that gets us messed up as a people. Don’t get me wrong, the stoics also believe in the concept of good or bad. We only focus on treating what happens around us as information that can then form the basis of our decisions and behaviors going forward. As a stoic, I always begin by acknowledging, objectively, what the state of things is.

Amor Fati is a Latin phrase that translates into “Love of Fate.”  Thomas Edison is one person whose story inspires many people to this day. One such story is how he stoically reacted to a misfortune in his life. In early 1900, Thomas’ factory caught fire and he was staring his life’s work go up in flames. Against the instinct of man to panic and fret when unfortunate events strike, Thomas Edison did something that remains admirable to stoics like me to this very date. He said to his son “go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again.” Basically, this fire invigorated him. Marcos Aurelio once said that “Everything you throw in front of a Fire is Fuel for that Fire.” The moral of Edison’s story is that when we are faced with the things outside our control, our only reaction should be to embrace it and make the best of it. This philosophy is not about always saying “whatever!” to everything, or accepting raw deal all your life. It’s about acknowledging things you cannot control, and not wasting your precious time and energy trying to change it. Instead, learn to embrace and make hay out of it.

The shortness of life is something we cannot change. Everyone is gonna die someday. Even the solar system will one day obliterate into nothingness. The universe as we know it is going to end someday. While this may sound like a sad thing to say, a stoic looks at it as information that should form the basis of how we make the most of the time we have on earth. Seneca, one of the most famous Roman Stoic philosophers, once asked, “You are afraid of dying, but how is the way you are living any different from being dead?” The point that Seneca wanted to put across was that so much of life is absurd and lame and ridiculous; and we are really just burning the days. Most of us live life like prisoners, with our minds fixated on the seconds-hand of the wall-clock ticking away, in a manner that we are only really freed by death. The idea is not to say that life is meaningless and that you should kill yourself. All I am saying is that life is super meaningful, and you are an idiot is you waste even a second of it. Everyone and everything will die, that’s a fact of life. Let’s make the most of this moment.

My favorite quote from Marcos Aurelius goes like this “Objective Judgement, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance, now at this very moment; of all external events.” This is stoicism in a nutshell. You don’t need to read Meditation, you don’t have to read Seneca, you don’t need to read Epictetus; you don’t need to get a degree in ancient philosophy from Harvard University, to get any more out of stoicism than what this quote underscores. It simply means we need to see the world as it is, for what it is; and for us to avoid putting judgments on top of everything. Just be a good person, be generous, be a good teammate, be a good citizen, and don’t be all about yourself. “Willing Acceptance” may sound like resignation, or being despondent, but what it really means from a stoic’s perspective, is that instead of complaining about how things are and always feeling persecuted, seeing everything as unfair, and fantasizing about going back in time to change things(WHICH YOU CAN'T); accept it, and then move forward with enlightened decisions. As stoics, we also believe we can still change the world, but that can only happen now and into the future, NOT THE PAST!

What do we as stoics do when we meet an asshole? A quote from Marcos Aurelius is always a good guide for me. Aurelius is not explicitly talking about ass holes in this quote, but the lessons can be extrapolated. Aurelius put the question “Is a world without shameless people possible? And his answer is NO.” According to Aurelius, when you meet an asshole (or in his case, a shameless person), just know you’ve met one of those people, and that increases the probability that the next person you gonna meet might not be an asshole. In other words, the world has assholes all over, and so meeting one should neither surprise nor should it upset you. For us stoics, the best revenge for when we meet assholes is to not be like them. Just that someone is rude to you does not mean you lower yourself to their level of rudeness. Does this mean you end up shrugging a lot of rude behaviors? SURE! Does that mean you are going to take some punches and not throw a punch back? SURE!  Stoics move on because they know they’ve got their own staff to deal with, a limited supply of “fucks” to give, and a short life to live. You do not waste it on assholes. A rude asshole should not throw you off your game and give you unnecessary “makasiriko”.  What Marcos insists about dealing with assholes is that such encounters should be a learning opportunity to make us adapt and better prepared for such encounters in the future.

Why did I start this piece by referencing the recent rocket launch by Space X? It’s because the whole space thing and the sheer scale of the universe have taught me the value of keeping one’s ego in check and how to deal with everyday anxieties. Here is what I would recommend; go out there and have those experiences in nature that will humble the shit out of you. Stand on a beach and watch (even listen to) the waves crashing at you with no one around; you’ve got to walk outside in your backyard and just take a look at the magnificence of the star in the sky; you’ve got to walk the city streets when they are empty; you’ve got to climb a mountain; you’ve got to visit a waterfall. The point is, just go out and see the fastness, the vastness, and immenseness of everything around you. What this does is that it immediately makes the things currently stressing you seem really petty and small and meaningless. It’s crazy to think that it was not until the early 1970s that we ever even actually knew what the world looked like. When you see the earth from images of outer space, you are immediately humbled. The countries and the borders suddenly disappear. We as humans are made tiny and insignificant when watched from the perspective of outer space. One of the meditative exercises of stoicism is to imagine the size of the universe and other multiverses, and then compare that with the size of the problems you face here on earth. If that’s not therapeutic to our everyday anxieties, then I do not know what is. Watching everything from up above reminds us of our own mortality, fragility, and insignificance in the grand scheme of cosmic things. Whenever I watch Nasa videos and space exploration videos, I am constantly reminded of what I need to care about; what really matters when all that we know is stripped away: working for the common good. Stoics are obsessed with everything that contributes to the overall good of humanity. Any distraction in between can be ignored. In other words, being selfish, being self-absorbed is a miserable way to live.

As I conclude this piece about stoicism, I implore you to go out there and have those “oceanic experiences.” Go get overwhelmed by the vastness of what’s around you. I do this by watching videos of space (that’s the only way I can get access to that part of the universe) and by going out on hiking adventures. These always remind me of the smallness of my being and everything that forms the earth. Such experiences trivialize the things that we are constantly obsessed about. We can then go back to such things with clear-headedness, with a fresher, more humbled mind, and a more authentic approach to life in general. 

Written by,

Jude Juma (A Practicing Stoic).