I’ve been reading a bit of Stoic philosophy recently (Seneca’s Letters, Meditiations etc). It’s a powerful tool to “limit the downside”, to deal with adversity. I realized I’ve been applying the “focus on what you can control and accept what you can’t” mantra of Stoicism since reading “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” as a teenager but had no idea it’s origin was rooted in Stoic philosophy. But there is something Stoicism is missing. Something that is intuitive to most of us but is rarely articulated.
Feeling joy; pure, heartfelt, completely consuming joy, is the pinnacle of the human experience. And the only way to consistently achieve this state in yourself is by helping others feel it. This has been on my mind lately with the arrival of my son. The sleepless nights got to me early on and I became sick. This felt devastating as I couldn’t hold him for several days. If a newborn becomes ill it can be fatal, so obviously I didn’t want to be responsible for that. But I also, selfishly, just wanted to hold him, to spend time with him, to get to know him. I can’t explain why this hit me so hard but it did – becoming a father has been extremely intense emotionally.
What surprised me, is that while I applied the habit of focusing on what I could control, I was still struggling with the thought that I was “so close” to inflicting fatal harm on my son (I know, the odds of this are extremely low with modern medicine but my brain wasn’t thinking rationally). It wasn’t until I started focusing on trying to make all those around me smile, that my mental state improved. It wasn’t until I started asking myself “how can I make my wife’s experience, during these precious early days of Motherhood, more joyful?” that I felt like life was wonderful again.
Stoicism is a powerful philosophy to live by when things are tough, but it places too small an emphasis on feeling and experiencing life by focusing on others. I now view Stoicism as not the only, but one of many lenses through which to view life. The trick is knowing when to change lenses.
