"Can anything be more idiotic than
certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously
preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in
organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant
future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away
each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The
greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses
today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what
lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal (Hope) are you straining?”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
After a
wonderful evening of dinner with friends, the interesting topic of Stoicism
came up.
I am a huge proponent of the Stoic philosophy. I love everything about it; the focus on the
present moment, the responsibility of self, and the examination of emotions
through the use of logic and reason. How could anyone disagree with those positions?
To my
surprise, a couple of friends thought the stoic philosophy wasn’t optimistic
enough, and contained too much negativity…they said, “It didn’t leave much room for hope”. The word “hope” stuck with me for a second. It really made me think of how a
Stoic would feel about this characterization of their belief system.
To a Stoic,
the past and future do not exist. There is only the present moment.
(Anyone who has ever read any of
Eckhart Tolle’s teachings will notice how he was heavily influenced by the
Stoic philosophy)
So according
to the Stoics, attaching oneself to the past or by “hoping” for a better future devalues the present and prevents one from living life to its fullest. Stoicism then articulated what Freud would
echo centuries later that… “He who
remains a prisoner of the past will always be incapable of acting and
enjoying." The same applies to
the person who is living for tomorrow, always waiting for their life to begin.
Hope, according to Stoic thought, is by
nature an absence, a lack, a source of constant tension because we live our
lives in terms of plans, hoping for
some distant goal on which our happiness depends.
Webster’s
Dictionary defines Hope…To cherish a
desire with anticipation…to desire
with expectation of obtainment…to expect with confidence. (I’ve highlighted these words to show the
extreme expectations that are attached to the future desires of hopes)
You might
ask, “What about goal setting?”
Goals are
different…Hope in achieving a goal is a
desire that has been clearly defined and
is planned with action. Hope, in
the way most people use it, is a wishful desire… a dream….lacking a clear
direction. A future thought that depends on future contingencies that most
times are not thought out and beyond our control.
Again…flawed
expectations.
The Danger of Unrealistic Hopes and Goals:
Goals have
their issues too. If one reaches their goal, they may experience a puzzling
sense of disillusionment and immediately our desires force us into “hoping” for
the next distant goal.
"We wait for life as life
passes" is the
famous phrase by the Stoic philosopher Seneca. The good life then, is a life
stripped of both hopes and fears. Hoping for happiness is to "seek it where it is not and neglect to
seek it where is it" -Epictetus.
I’m also an
avid reader of Buddhism. I was surprised to discover this Stoic philosophy was
also echoed in the Buddhist teachings.
“You must learn to live as if this
present moment was the most vital of your life. For nothing else exists in
truth: the past is no longer and the future is not yet".
Even Nietzsche
weighed in against hope… “We 'shoulder' like 'beasts of burden'
because of our inability to love reality for itself.”
Our reality
is our reality…and sometimes that may be depressing (that’s a personal perspective); however, the unrealistic,
unexamined expectations of future hopes
are destructive patterns of thoughts that permeate into other areas of our lives
as well.
French
philosophy Andre Comte-Sponville points out that "to hope is to desire without consummation, without knowledge, without
power".
To desire
without consummation because by definition we do not have what we hope for… to desire without knowledge because if we knew how to obtain the object of our
desires, then we would do so… desire without power because, again, if we had
the power to obtain our desires, we would do so. Hope then according to Andre leads to
frustration and impotence.
Hope highlights an important
difference between Christianity and Stoicism…
Christianity
teaches the world is not as it should be and that we live in a cursed and
fallen world…we are sinners, unworthy, and decrepit. We therefore “hope” for the grace of God and for the
Kingdom of God and for our own salvation.
(*note...I
do not believe this is the message of Jesus)
Stoicism, on
the other hand, aims to understand and appreciate the world we live in and accept
our place within it. Good or bad, we have an opportunity to experience.
“Life is happening for us…not to us.
Every moment is a chance to learn…a chance to understand”
Christianity
teaches dissatisfaction and despair can only be defeated by hope. Stoicism teaches despair is caused
by making faulty judgments on the world, that hope is at best worthless.
Stoicism is
a practice of reason, logic, and living in the present moment. It’s about
realistic expectations and facing the ugly realities of life (Lies, stealing, cheating, deceptions,
depressions, anxiety, and death) that are out of our control.
However, by
accepting the cold hard realities of our condition, Stoicism allows us to
appreciate the beautiful opportunities that await those who willfully
acknowledge the ebbs and flows of life knowing that it’s all going to be ok.
“No
man is free unless he is master of himself”
-Epictetus