A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (9 page)

B
UT WHAT ABOUT
those individuals who clearly aren’t living the dream? What about a homeless person, for example? The important thing to realize is that Stoicism is by no means a rich person’s philosophy. Those who enjoy a comfortable and affluent life can benefit from the practice of Stoicism, but so can those who are impoverished. In particular, although their poverty will prevent them from doing many things, it will not preclude them from practicing negative visualization.

Consider the person who has been reduced to possession of only a loincloth. His circumstances could be worse: He could lose the loincloth. He would do well, say the Stoics, to reflect on this possibility. Suppose, then, that he loses his loincloth. As long as he retains his health, his circumstances could again be worse—a point worth considering. And if his health deteriorates? He can be thankful that he is still alive.

It is hard to imagine a person who could not somehow be worse off. It is therefore hard to imagine a person who could not benefit from the practice of negative visualization. The claim is not that practicing it will make life as enjoyable for those who have nothing as it is for those who have much. The
claim is merely that the practice of negative visualization—and more generally, the adoption of Stoicism—can take some of the sting out of having nothing and thereby make those who have nothing less miserable than they would otherwise be.

Along these lines, consider the plight of James Stockdale. (If the name rings a bell, it is probably because he was Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 campaign for president of the United States.) A navy pilot, Stockdale was shot down over Vietnam in 1965 and held as a prisoner of war until 1973. During that time, he experienced poor health, primitive living conditions, and the brutality of his jailers. And yet he not only survived but emerged an unbroken man. How did he manage it? In large part, he says, by practicing Stoicism.
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One other thing to realize: Although they offer downtrodden people advice on how to make their existence more tolerable, the Stoics are by no means in favor of keeping these people in their state of subjugation. The Stoics would work to improve their external circumstances, but at the same time, the Stoics would suggest things they could do to alleviate their misery until those circumstances are improved.

O
NE MIGHT IMAGINE
that the Stoics, because they go around contemplating worst-case scenarios, would tend toward pessimism. What we find, though, is that the regular practice of negative visualization has the effect of transforming Stoics into full-blown optimists. Allow me to explain.

We normally characterize an optimist as someone who sees his glass as being half full rather than half empty. For a Stoic, though, this degree of optimism would only be a starting
point. After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen. And if he is atop his Stoic game, he might go on to comment about what an astonishing thing glass vessels are: They are cheap and fairly durable, impart no taste to what we put in them, and—miracle of miracles!—allow us to see what they contain. This might sound a bit silly, but to someone who has not lost his capacity for joy, the world is a wonderful place. To such a person, glasses are amazing; to everyone else, a glass is just a glass, and it is half empty to boot.

Hedonic adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world. Because of adaptation, we take our life and what we have for granted rather than delighting in them. Negative visualization, though, is a powerful antidote to hedonic adaptation. By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.

One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted. To them, the world is wonderfully new and surprising. Not only that, but they aren’t yet sure how the world works: Perhaps the things they have today will mysteriously vanish tomorrow. It is hard for them to take something for granted when they can’t even count on its continued existence.

But as children grow older, they grow jaded. By the time they are teenagers, they are likely to take almost everything and everyone around them for granted. They might grumble about having to live the life they are living, in the home they
happen to inhabit, with the parents and siblings they happen to have. And in a frightening number of cases, these children grow up to be adults who are not only unable to take delight in the world around them but seem proud of this inability. They will, at the drop of a hat, provide you with a long list of things about themselves and their life that they dislike and wish they could change, were it possible to do so, including their spouse, their children, their house, their job, their car, their age, their bank balance, their weight, the color of their hair, and the shape of their navel. Ask them what they appreciate about the world—ask them what, if anything, they are satisfied with—and they might, after some thought, reluctantly name a thing or two.

S
OMETIMES A CATASTROPHE
blasts these people out of their jadedness. Suppose, for example, a tornado destroys their home. Such events are tragic, of course, but at the same time they potentially have a silver lining: Those who survive them might come to appreciate whatever they still possess. More generally, war, disease, and natural disasters are tragic, inasmuch as they take from us the things we value, but they also have the power to transform those who experience them. Before, these individuals might have been sleepwalking through life; now they are joyously, thankfully alive—as alive as they have felt in decades. Before, they might have been indifferent to the world around them; now they are alert to the world’s beauty.

Catastrophe-induced personal transformations have drawbacks, though. The first is that you can’t count on being struck by a catastrophe. Indeed, many people have a catastrophe-free—and as a consequence, joyless—life. (Ironically, it is
these people’s misfortune to have a life that is blessedly free of misfortune.) A second drawback is that catastrophes that have the power to transform someone can also take his life. Consider, for example, a passenger on an airliner, the engines of which have just burst into flames. This turn of events is likely to cause the passenger to reassess his life, and as a result, he might finally gain some insight into what things in life are truly valuable and what things are not. Unfortunately, moments after this epiphany he might be dead.

The third drawback to catastrophe-induced transformations is that the states of joy they trigger tend to wear off. Those who come close to dying but subsequently revive typically regain their zest for living. They might, for example, feel motivated to contemplate the sunsets they had previously ignored or to engage in heartfelt conversations with the spouse they had previously taken for granted. They do this for a time, but then, in all too many cases, apathy returns: They might ignore the gorgeous sunset that is blazing outside their window in order to complain bitterly to their spouse that there is nothing worth watching on television.

Negative visualization does not have these drawbacks. We don’t have to wait to engage in negative visualization the way we have to wait to be struck by a catastrophe. Being struck by a catastrophe can easily kill us; engaging in negative visualization can’t. And because negative visualization can be done repeatedly, its beneficial effects, unlike those of a catastrophe, can last indefinitely. Negative visualization is therefore a wonderful way to regain our appreciation of life and with it our capacity for joy.

T
HE
S
TOICS ARE NOT
alone in harnessing the power of negative visualization. Consider, for example, those individuals who say grace before a meal. Some presumably say it because they are simply in the habit of doing so. Others might say it because they fear that God will punish them if they don’t. But understood properly, saying grace—and for that matter, offering any prayer of thanks—is a form of negative visualization. Before eating a meal, those saying grace pause for a moment to reflect on the fact that this food might not have been available to them, in which case they would have gone hungry. And even if the food were available, they might not have been able to share it with the people now at their dinner table. Said with these thoughts in mind, grace has the ability to transform an ordinary meal into a cause for celebration.

Some people don’t need the Stoics or a priest to tell them that the key to a cheerful disposition is periodically to entertain negative thoughts; they figured it out on their own. In the course of my life, I have met many such people. They analyze their circumstances not in terms of what they are lacking but in terms of how much they have and how much they would miss it were they to lose it. Many of them have been quite unlucky, objectively speaking, in their life; nevertheless, they will tell you at length how lucky they are—to be alive, to be able to walk, to be living where they live, and so forth. It is instructive to compare these people with those who, objectively speaking, “have it all,” but who, because they appreciate none of what they have, are utterly miserable.

Earlier I mentioned that there are people who seem proud of their inability to take delight in the world around them.
They have somehow gotten the idea that by refusing to take delight in the world, they are demonstrating their emotional maturity: To take delight in things, they think, is childish. Or maybe they have decided that it is fashionable to refuse to take delight in the world, the way it is fashionable to refuse to wear white after Labor Day, and they feel compelled to obey the dictates of fashion. To refuse to take delight in the world, in other words, is evidence of sophistication.

If you ask these malcontents for their opinion of the cheerful people just described—or even worse, of those Stoic optimists who go on at length about what a wonderful thing glass is—they are likely to respond with disparaging remarks: “Such people are clearly fools. They shouldn’t be satisfied with so little. They should want more and not rest content until they get it.” I would argue, though, that what is really foolish is to spend your life in a state of self-induced dissatisfaction when satisfaction lies within your grasp, if only you will change your mental outlook. To be able to be satisfied with little is not a failing, it is a blessing—if, at any rate, what you seek is satisfaction. And if you seek something other than satisfaction, I would inquire (with astonishment) into what it is that you find more desirable than satisfaction. What, I would ask, could possibly be worth sacrificing satisfaction in order to obtain?

I
F WE HAVE
an active imagination, it will be easy for us to engage in negative visualization; it will be easy for us to imagine, for example, that our house has burned to the ground, our boss has fired us, or we have gone blind. If we have trouble
imagining such things, though, we can practice negative visualization by paying attention to the bad things that happen to other people and reflecting on the fact that these things might instead have happened to us.
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Alternatively, we can do some historical research to see how our ancestors lived. We will quickly discover that we are living in what to them would have been a dream world—that we tend to take for granted things that our ancestors had to live without, including antibiotics, air conditioning, toilet paper(!), cell phones, television, windows, eyeglasses, and fresh fruit in January. Upon coming to this realization, we can breathe a sigh of relief that we aren’t our ancestors, the way our descendants will presumably someday breathe a sigh of relief that they aren’t us!

The negative visualization technique, by the way, can also be used in reverse: Besides imagining that the bad things that happened to others happen to us, we can imagine that the bad things that happen to us happened instead to others. In his
Handbook
, Epictetus advocates this sort of “projective visualization.” Suppose, he says, that our servant breaks a cup.
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We are likely to get angry and have our tranquility disrupted by the incident. One way to avert this anger is to think about how we would feel if the incident had happened to someone else instead. If we were at someone’s house and his servant broke a cup, we would be unlikely to get angry; indeed, we might try to calm our host by saying “It’s just a cup; these things happen.” Engaging in projective visualization, Epictetus believes, will make us appreciate the relative insignificance of the bad things that happen to us and will therefore prevent them from disrupting our tranquility.

A
T THIS POINT
, a non-Stoic might raise the following objection. The Stoics, as we have seen, advise us to pursue tranquility, and as part of their strategy for attaining it they advise us to engage in negative visualization. But isn’t this contradictory advice? Suppose, for example, that a Stoic is invited to a picnic. While the other picnickers are enjoying themselves, the Stoic will sit there, quietly contemplating ways the picnic could be ruined: “Maybe the potato salad is spoiled, and people will get food poisoning. Maybe someone will break an ankle playing softball. Maybe there will be a violent thunderstorm that will scatter the picnickers. Maybe I will be struck by lightning and die.” This sounds like no fun at all. But more to the point, it seems unlikely that a Stoic will gain tranquility as a result of entertaining such thoughts. To the contrary, he is likely to end up glum and anxiety-ridden.

In response to this objection, let me point out that it is a mistake to think Stoics will spend
all
their time contemplating potential catastrophes. It is instead something they will do periodically: A few times each day or a few times each week a Stoic will pause in his enjoyment of life to think about how all this, all these things he enjoys, could be taken from him.