A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (21 page)

Philosophers, to be sure, no longer fear banishment. This is in part because governments are more enlightened than they used to be and in part because philosophers have succeeded in making themselves invisible to both politicians and the public at large. Sometimes, in idle moments, I find myself wishing that the government of my country would consider banishing philosophers—or, if not banishing us, at least locking us up for a few days to teach us a lesson. Not that I want to be banished or want my colleagues to be banished, but the fact that a government would consider banishing a group is evidence that the group
matters
, that it somehow makes a difference in a
culture, a difference that might worry the authorities. What I am really wishing, I suppose, is that philosophy mattered in my culture the way it mattered to ancient Romans.

I
N CHAPTER
12, I mentioned Seneca’s consolation to his mother Helvia, who was upset at his being exiled. In the consolation, Seneca comforts her by telling her that exile isn’t really that bad—not as bad, at any rate, as people make it out to be. Exile, he explains, is nothing but a change of place. Furthermore, even in the worst places of exile, the exiled person will find people who are there of their own free will.
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It may be true, says Seneca, that by being exiled he has been deprived of his country, his friends and family, and his property, but he has taken with him into exile the things that matter most: his place in Nature and his virtue. He adds, “It is the mind that makes us rich; this goes with us into exile, and in the wildest wilderness, having found there all that the body needs for its sustenance, it itself overflows in the enjoyment of its own goods.”
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Seneca apparently spent his time in exile reading, writing, and studying nature.

Musonius’s exile, as we have seen, was one of the worst exiles possible, to the “worthless” island of Gyara. Nevertheless, he says, those who visited him during his exile never heard him complain or saw him disheartened. Being exiled may have deprived him of his country, but it didn’t deprive him, he says, of his ability to endure exile. Indeed, Musonius thinks exile deprives a person of nothing that is truly valuable. Exile cannot prevent us, for example, from being courageous or just. If we are virtuous—if we have the proper values—exile cannot
harm or degrade us. If we are not virtuous, though, exile will deprive us of much of what we (mistakenly) think is valuable, and we will therefore be miserable.
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To endure and even thrive in exile, Musonius says, a person must keep in mind that his happiness depends more on his values than on where he resides. Indeed, Musonius views himself as a citizen not of Rome but of “the city of Zeus which is populated by human beings and gods.”
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He points out that even in exile we can associate with others and that our true friends will not refuse to associate with us just because we have been exiled. If those in exile find themselves lacking things, he asserts, it is because they seek to live in luxury. Furthermore, those in exile have something that those in Rome lack—namely, freedom to speak their mind.

Musonius also reminds us that exile has changed people for the better. It has, for example, forced people to curtail their luxurious living and has thereby improved their health. It has also transformed ordinary people, such as Diogenes of Sinope, into philosophers.
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(Before becoming a Cynic, Diogenes had been forced to flee Sinope because either he or his banker father had adulterated the coinage there; when someone later brought up this incident in an attempt to shame him, Diogenes, with typical Cynic wit, responded that although it was true that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he in turn had sentenced them to remain in Sinope.)
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I
T IS CLEAR
why the Stoics had an interest in exile: As we have seen, they ran an interesting chance of being sentenced to it. People no longer live in fear of being exiled by their government,
so it might seem as if the Stoic advice on exile is of theoretical and historical interest only. But this is not so.

Even though readers of this book are unlikely to be exiled by their government, they run a considerable risk, if current social trends continue, of being exiled by their children—exiled, that is, to a nursing home. It is a transition that, if they let it, can severely disrupt their tranquility. Indeed, there is a very real danger that this exile will cause them to spend their final, precious days on earth complaining about their life rather than enjoying it. In the next chapter, we will turn our attention to this special kind of exile and to other problems associated with aging.

On Being Banished to a Nursing Home

A
S A COLLEGE PROFESSOR
, I spend my days around twenty-year-olds. Many of them, I have found, are convinced that the world will be their oyster. They think they will be rock stars, either literally or figuratively speaking. (It is understandable that they would think this. What perplexes me is their belief that, as rock stars, they will find profound and lasting happiness. They need, perhaps, to follow the entertainment news more closely.) These twentysomethings aren’t willing to settle for “mere tranquility” when there is so much else to be had: a perfect boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, a perfect job, and the love and admiration of all those around them. For them, Stoicism sounds like a philosophy for losers, and they aren’t losers.

In extreme cases, these young people harbor a profound sense of entitlement. They think it is life’s job to unroll a red carpet ahead of them, down whatever path they choose to take. When life fails to do this—when the path they have chosen gets bumpy and rutted, or even becomes impassible—they are astonished. This isn’t how things are supposed to be! Surely someone, somewhere, has made a terrible mistake!

As the years go by, though, these twentysomethings come to realize that life will present them with obstacles, and they start developing skill at overcoming those obstacles. In particular, when the world does not hand them fame and fortune on a silver platter, they realize that they must work to get it, and so they do. Often, the world rewards their efforts, and as a result, they find that when they are in their thirties, their external circumstances, although not quite what they had hoped they would be when they were twenty, are nevertheless tolerable. At this point, they often redouble their efforts to improve their external circumstances in the belief that this will somehow gain them the perfect life they dream of having.

After trying this strategy for another decade, though, it might dawn on them that they aren’t gaining any ground. They are getting paid twenty times more than they once were, they are living in a four-bedroom house instead of a studio apartment, and they are the subject of adulatory articles in the newspaper, but they are no closer to happiness than they used to be. Indeed, thanks to the complexity of their schemes for gaining happiness, they find themselves experiencing anxiety, anger, and frustration. They also discover that their success has a downside: They have become the target of other people’s envy. It is at this stage that many people who were formerly oblivious to philosophy start getting philosophical. “Is this all life has to offer?” they wonder. “Is this the life I want to live?”

Sometimes this period of philosophical speculation triggers what, in our culture, we call a midlife crisis. The person experiencing the crisis might sensibly conclude that his unhappiness is the result of wanting the wrong things. In all too many cases,
though, he doesn’t draw this conclusion; instead, he concludes that he is unhappy as the result of making certain short-term sacrifices to attain various long-term goals. He therefore decides to stop making these short-term sacrifices: He buys a new car, or abandons his wife and takes on a lover. After a time, though, it becomes apparent to him that this strategy for gaining happiness is no better and is in many ways worse than his previous strategy.

He might, at this point, turn his attention back to meaning-of-life questions. And if this isn’t sufficient to make him take up such questions, the aging process—and along with it, the prospect of death drawing ever nearer—probably will. As a result of contemplating these questions, he might find that Stoicism, which held no appeal whatsoever for him when he was young, now seems plausible as a philosophy of life.

W
HEN WE WERE YOUNG
, we might have wondered what it would be like to be old. And if we are Stoics, we might, in our practice of negative visualization, have imagined what it would be like. Unless death intervenes, though, a day will come when we won’t need to wonder or imagine what it would be like to be old; we will know full well. The abilities we once took for granted will have departed. We used to run for miles; now we get winded walking down the hallway. We used to handle the finances of a corporation; now we can’t even balance our checkbook. We used to be the person who knew when everyone’s birthday was; now we can’t even remember our own.

The loss of these abilities means we can no longer fend for ourselves, and as a result we might find ourselves banished to
a nursing home. The home in question will not, to be sure, be a desolate island like the one to which Musonius was banished. Indeed, it will be physically quite comfortable, with regular meals and someone to do our laundry, clean our room, and maybe even help us bathe. But although our new environment is physically comfortable, it is likely to be quite challenging socially. We will find ourselves surrounded by people not of our choosing. We might, as a result, have to interact, each and every day, over breakfast and before we have had our coffee, with the same ornery individuals. We might find that despite having enjoyed a high degree of social status in our prime, we are now low man on the nursing home’s status totem pole; it might turn out, for example, that there is a “cool table” in the nursing home’s dining room, and we have not been invited to sit there.

Living in a nursing home resembles, in many respects, being in high school. Cliques form, and their members spend considerable amounts of time talking down the members of rival cliques. In other respects, it resembles living in a college dorm: You are in a single room that opens onto a communal corridor; you can either stay in your room and stare at the four walls, or venture out of your room into an environment you might find socially challenging.

Living in a nursing home also resembles living in a time of plague: You watch as the ambulance pulls up a few times each month—or, in a large home, a few times each week—to haul away the bodies of those who did not survive the night. If you don’t live in a nursing home, you will be spared these recurring ambulances, but you probably won’t be spared learning of the
deaths of long-time friends, brothers and sisters, and perhaps even your own children.

A twenty-year-old might reject Stoicism in the belief that the world is going to be her oyster; an eighty-year-old knows full well that the world isn’t her oyster and that her situation is only going to worsen with the passing years. Although she may have believed she was immortal when she was twenty, her own mortality is now painfully obvious to her. Faced with death, she might finally be willing to settle for “mere tranquility,” and she might, as a result, be ripe for Stoicism.

Having said this, I should add that it is entirely possible to grow old without becoming ripe for Stoicism or any other philosophy of life. Indeed, many people go through life repeatedly making the same mistakes and are no closer to happiness in their eighties than they were in their twenties. These individuals, rather than enjoying their life, will have been embittered by it, and now, near the end of their life, they live to complain—about their circumstances, their relatives, the food, the weather, in short, about absolutely everything.

Such cases are tragic inasmuch as these people had it in their power—and, indeed, still have it in their power—to experience joy, but they either chose the wrong goals in living, or chose the right goals but adopted a defective strategy to attain those goals. This is the downside of failing to develop an effective philosophy of life: You end up wasting the one life you have.

O
LD AGE
, Seneca argues, has its benefits: “Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it.” Indeed, he claims that the most delightful time of life is
“when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.” He adds that even the time of “abrupt decline” has pleasures of its own. Most significantly, as one loses the ability to experience certain pleasures, one loses the desire to experience them: “How comforting it is,” he says, “to have tired out one’s appetites, and to have done with them!”
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Consider lust, the desire for sexual gratification. Lust is, for many people—and for males in particular, I think—a major distraction in daily living. We might be able to control whether or not we act on lustful feelings, but the feelings themselves seem to be hardwired into us. (If we lacked such feelings or could easily extinguish them, it is unlikely that we would have survived as a species.) Because they distract us, feelings of lust have a significant impact on how we spend our days.

As we age, though, our feelings of lust and the state of distraction that accompanies them diminish. Some would argue that this is a bad thing, that it is yet another example of one of the pleasures of youth that is lost to us. But the Greek dramatist Sophocles offered another viewpoint. When he had grown old and someone asked whether, despite his years, he could still make love to a woman, he replied, “I am very glad to have escaped from this, like a slave who has escaped from a mad and cruel master.”
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Seneca points out that by causing our bodies to deteriorate, old age causes our vices and their accessories to decay. The same aging process, though, needn’t cause our mind to decay; indeed, Seneca remarks that despite his age, his mind “is strong and rejoices that it has but slight connexion with the body.” He is also thankful that his mind has thereby “laid aside the greater part of its load.”
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