“There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
-Seneca
Ahh, the Stoics! In an age of unending emotional trauma, in which our traumatic triggers trigger other traumas and everyone seems to be trying to “work through” his emotions, the writings of the Stoics are a cold blast of fresh air. Through the haze of swirling “feels,” one can catch a glimpse in the Stoics of another way: a path that moves logically through a complex world of pain and suffering.
As Seneca observed in his letter titled “On groundless fear,” as much suffering and discontent as there is in the world, most of our anguish occurs only in our own minds. We can so easily convince ourselves that any number of disasters are certain when, as Seneca notes, our experience demonstrate how often the expected does not materialize and the unexpected occurs. We can so easily become students of woe, blind to the happy circumstances that again and again arise in our waking each morning, our relative good health, the abundance that surrounds us.
In his letter to an aspiring young Stoic, Seneca writes, “What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come.” Easier said than done, surely, but as so many successful Stoics show us, practice improves our ability to reshape our thinking and to train our minds.
The practice of prayer is sometimes nothing other than attuning oneself to the present moment, the only time that exists for us. Everything else—our tortured regret for times past and our frenetic worry about times yet to come—are mere illusions. Becoming once again aware of what is real, the moment in which we can act, can relieve the debilitating weight of our worry.
There’s another angle to all our mental suffering. Sometimes the cause of our unhappiness is our own good fortune. It is the person who is well-supplied who has the luxury of indulgent thinking. Having achieved a state in life when basic necessities are met, one might erroneously assume that life becomes easier. And it can, but for many, success means an added weight of anxiety. Someone who possesses stability acquires the ability to worry about losing it.
Some people who struggle to function in moments of relative calm can find solace in small sufferings. Afflicted with a head cold or a sleepless child, a person of intense melancholia may find reprieve. Having an urgent and present need to be met, far-flung phantom misery is harder to call into view. The pressure of having to nurture others or restore oneself can be an invitation to the present.
It’s natural for creatures to seek pleasure and avoid pain. But for us, people who are rational animals, it is not good always to seek first our own comfort. By avoiding obligation and discomfort, we may unwittingly sign ourselves up for a life of mental torture. The drudgery of ordinary living can discipline the mind and lead us out of a world of hurt entirely imagined. There is plenty of suffering in the world, and ours will come. There is not need to fret about it before it arrives. Embrace the real, often small sufferings of life to avoid a universe of imagined pain.
