Of all the philosophies so soundly misunderstood and misappropriated, Existentialism deserves to be near the top of the list. During its heyday after World War II it made its rounds – through intellectual communities, into literary masterpieces, from beatnik drum circles, all the way to Hollywood.
It spawned countless generations of black turtleneck wearing nihilists decrying the futility of living in a world devoid of meaning, and even today echoes in the emo crowds of modern music and culture. The problem with the common and the diminutive nihilistic view of Existentialism is that it approaches only the shadow of it while straying far from its actual form.
Perhaps existentialism is so misunderstood because those people who began it often disagreed on what it actually meant. Some, like Albert Camus, denying they had any relation to it at all. Regardless of the reason for the misunderstanding of Existentialism, I hope to bring some clarity on what it means to be an existentialist, some relevance of it to your life and most importantly, some practical reasons why you might want to fold a little Existentialism into your living.
What is an Existentialist?
For those truly lacking any background in Existentialism – it is a philosophical school of thought that has murky origins coalescing somewhere around the late 19th century. Much of the credit for its initial exposition is due to such thinkers as Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, to varying degrees. These three philosophers were instrumental in resurrecting philosophies ancient mission of an activity that is to be pursued by all and not merely an intellectual pursuit for the elites.
While these three “founding fathers” may have been instrumental in laying the metaphysical and epistemological groundwork that would be needed to erect the final structure of Existentialism, the names most well-known surrounding this philosophy are that of, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone De Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to name but a few.
These four philosophical revolutionaries lived during the tumultuous times of World War II and the global political, cultural and geographic destruction that ushered in the reshaping of the world. This new world cried out for a new philosophy and a new type of philosopher. A philosophy that was lived and experienced. A philosophy of phenomenological addition and not academic subtraction. A philosophy that gave people a starting point to rebuild their lives. And so out of the rubble that was the aftermath of World War II there came the starving, broken orphan that was the existentialist.
The existentialist was a new breed of thinker that was concerned with the problems of the ordinary man. It made philosophy of everything – of all things – and by doing so it brought our everyday experience into the realm of the philosophical and called to task the old philosophical gods of Positivism and Rationalism that had the world believing that intellectual deduction alone could help us understand the world.
These new philosophers ached to expose the anguish, pain, absurdity and authenticity of living. They did not shy away from the dark, secret things that haunt the corners of philosophical rooms. No. They worked to shed a light on our individual experience as a means to understanding the world, and by doing so created a philosophy that captured the general malaise, but burgeoning hope, of the world that was hell-bent on rebuilding itself in a better way.
Existentialism is as relevant today, in the whipping swirl of global terrorism, political upheaval, and constant fear, as it was during those tumultuous times. And perhaps now, more than ever, it is a philosophy that should be explored by those looking for a better way forward amidst a growing cloud of anxiety and fear.
How To Be an Existentialist
So how does one go about pursuing the life of an existentialist?
While there are many major and minor points of departure developed between the Existentialist philosophers, there are a few salient tenets that can be approached that I think most existentialists would agree upon, in form if not function.
Existence Precedes Essence
Perhaps the most fundamental concept shared by nearly all the existentialist philosophers is the idea that existence precedes essence. This was such a profound, revolutionary shift in thinking from the old Platonic and Socratic ideas of Essentialism that existed for thousands of years. Where Essentialism asserted that we are all imbued with a fundamental essence or purpose and our goal in life is to live towards that purpose, existentialism proposed the opposite. First, we exist and then we have to go create our essence, and by doing so we create our purpose.
In Existentialism, we do not have the luxury of relying on something intrinsic in our being to give us our definition. In every moment of our life, we are given the great and weighty task of defining who we are. We must create our essence in every moment through the choices we make or defer and only then are we able to approach anything resembling our purpose.
There is nothing inside of you to discover. Existentialism claims that you must put things inside yourself for others to discover. You must create the person that will fall in love, that will be a good friend, that will value liberalism or conservatism. That will be altruistic or self-involved. That will, in fact, live or die. You alone are the creator and maintainer of yourself.
You may not realize it but I am willing to bet that you already accept and exercise this concept on a regular basis. Every time that you shrug off the labels thrown at you by someone else, despite your upbringing, your sexual orientation, your race, or whatever, you are telling the world that, because you exist as you do, you alone get to define what that means.
Absurdity
The concept of absurdity in Existentialism is where we find the moaning and groaning of the nihilists. They get stuck here, ghosts trapped in the idea that life is meaningless, and they never make it out the other side. While the existentialist idea of absurdity does assert that all of life, and the actions therein, are inherently meaningless, it does not stop there. The concept of absurdity in Existentialism is, in fact, the beginning of our search to give meaning to the meaningless, and therein lies the way out of nihilism in regards to this important concept in Existentialism.
To start off, yes, the existential belief is that the world is inherently meaningless. If you dive deep into the random workings of the world, they amount to nothing more than the meaning we have given to them. They hold no value in themselves and as such, no meaning. Despite this intrinsic meaningless, we are still very much capable, and in fact responsible, of furnishing the world with a multiplicity of meaning.
Sure, things have no innate meaning, but that does not mean that things are meaning-less. It means that things are a blank slate of meaning. Things are meaning-neutral. We are responsible for giving things their meaning. We have the power to provide the meaning to everything in our life and by doing so, we impart a personal meaning on things and understand that other people will put another meaning on them.
As a brief metaphor, I know my cat cannot understand me when I talk to her, but god damn if I am not going to keep on debating her on the nuance of meaning in Hegelian Phenomenology. Yes, it is meaningless to talk to her and expect her to understand me but it is meaningful to me because no one else is willing to listen to my pseudo-philosophical nonsense!
My point is, just because we know that something is ridiculous, absurd and inherently meaningless, that does not mean we cannot give it meaning, and by doing so, pull it out of the dark trenches of nihilism and breathe new life into it. Just as we exist and then must create our essence, the world exists in absurdity and we must create a meaningful essence for it.
Freedom
The concept of freedom in Existentialism is one closely tied to absurdity and anguish. It is through our discovery that we have complete freedom and responsibility to shape the meaning of the world and what we value in it that we come to experience our absurd anguish.
The existential idea of freedom is not the common understanding that is tossed around in political circles. The existential experience of freedom is one of consistent responsibility of action towards your values. It is a recognition that we are perpetually and utterly free in every moment to choose our meaning, direction, and destination. We must freely do so at every moment, in fact, unable to rest our faculties of choice upon past decisions.
The constant requirement of freedom in life is one of accountability for the life that we lead and the way that it shapes up. We alone are the artists of our lives and we alone are completely free to accept the condition of what we create or, if we are unsatisfied with our life, choose freely to change it.
You cannot look to your parents, or politicians, or clergy or anyone, to define the proper way to live. These are all mere existences that have already created their own essence and have no answers for you outside of the cobbled together values that they themselves had to find alone.
And so you are tasked, in complete freedom, to go into the dark alone and feel around for the values that you hold dear, and bring them to the light of your life by choosing them freely again and again.
Authenticity
Another key hallmark of Existentialism is the idea of authenticity. You might ask, “How I am supposed to live authentically if I don’t have any purpose inside of myself?” And I think that is a fair question that gets at the root of the problem regarding the current understanding of authenticity.
Today, most people will describe “being authentic” as something you just do. Just be authentic. Just be who you are. Just be yourself. The problem here, as presented by Existentialism is, there is no me that is intrinsic to my being. I have no reference point to “just be myself” because myself is not yet defined.
The idea of authenticity that is espoused by Existentialism is a much more actionable mode of living and one that holds more value than the current idea of it. It asserts that authenticity is about accepting your “radical freedom” and striving to live fully in the essence that you have created for yourself. The existential idea of authenticity is one of glorious rebellion against the labels that are forced upon you in favor of living true to those that you have adopted for yourself.
Existentialism says that we must first create our authentic self and then, we must live according to the perpetual freedom that we are subject to. To live authentically is to live according to the essence you have created, despite the pressures of society to live differently. It is about shrugging off the roles that are imposed upon you be your wealth, your race, your age, your upbringing, and other “facticities” and living true to your values in spite of these things.
Why be an Existentialist?
So why would you want to be an existentialist? Besides the badass turtle necks and the wicked awesome sense of existential dread and anguish regarding your complete and ultimate radical freedom? You should be an existentialist because you have no choice! At least that is what Sartre might say. And I do not think he would be that far from the truth.
The truth is, existentialism’s appeal is in the rigid sense of personal responsibility it applies to all of us. In Existentialism, we find a template for approaching a sense of personal responsibility for our places in the world and for the people we have become.
Existentialism exposes the dark underbelly of our radically free existence and screams for us to change what we want to be changed, to live authentically despite the pressures to do otherwise and to explore endlessly those things that we have come to value in order that we might constantly be on the meaningful side of living.
To be an existentialist is to take action, not just to think. It is to bring philosophy into everyday life. It is to understand that reason alone cannot help us approach the beauty and meaning of living. We must venture off the map and blaze new trails, create new experiences and values, choose constantly what we would like to see of the world and live boldly to stay true to those ideals.
The beauty of Existentialism is that it is nearly shapeless. It as well exists without an essence. Only gaining one when it is given by the person that adopts it and puts it into action. Existentialism is a personal philosophy – one that seeks to confront personal things in a way that does not shield itself from the rough exposure to life’s many miseries. It is brutally honest, but in that honesty, you can find the tough love you need to take responsibility for your actions, redefine the value and meaning of your life and live authentically in whatever way that means for you!
Supplemental Material
The intellectually superior minds at Crash Course Philosophy do a great job in distilling my ramblings into a more edible bit of brain food. I encourage you to check out this video they have on Existentialism:
Along with the many others, they have on many other philosophies!
The world is mostly a cold, dark, bitter, lonely place of gladiatorial-like competition for limited resources, wealth, and power. We are not so far removed from our ancient evolutionary ancestors where we have been able to deny our instincts for territory and abundance with little concern for anyone who lacks them. This makes everyone competition if we let it make us that way.
Now, I am not going to sit here and say there are not some really genuine, great, altruistic people in this world. I know there are. There are some people who would do anything for you and would keep doing it, just to make sure you kept succeeding. They want you to blow the fucking roof off of your life and build a skyscraper in its place and will help you do it, in any way that they can.
These people are few and far between, and the more I live, the more I succeed, the more I continue to do shit that no one ever thought I could do – or actively told me I couldn’t do – I have found that most people want you to fail. Not totally fail, just fail enough so you never get above them.
Here is what I have seen in my life; when you are suffering – when you are low and down and need a hand – there are a good number of people who are going to help you out. They are going to empathize with you. They are going to shed some tears. They are going to give you a hug or say, “That must be really hard. I am sorry to hear that.”
They may lend you some money or help you out in other ways. And maybe, just maybe, they really mean it. Maybe they honestly wish you didn’t have it so hard and they really want to see you do good things because suffering is hard to watch. But most of those same people – most of the people in this world – never, ever want to see you do better than them. They only help you because it makes THEM feel better and they think it puts you above them. They give you something because they feel like you will owe them for that. They serve in a selfish way and that is only a service to them. But why do people do this? Why do people try to sabotage or minimize other’s success instead of working on their own?
Why don’t people want you to do better than them? Well…
It forces them to look at their lives
Some people in this world are always going to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “At least I am not so-and-so.” or “At least I don’t have so-and-so’s life”. This isn’t necessarily bad when paired with empathy and action to help others, but most people use this a means of judgment and by proxy, validation that their shitty life doesn’t need changing because they don’t have it as bad as someone else. Well, those people need to look at themselves in the mirror for longer and if they don’t see something they can be proud of, without having to bring someone down to lift themselves up, then they need to go be someone they can be proud of because it doesn’t matter who has it worse if your life isn’t what you want, to begin with.
Looking at yourself and seeing something you don’t like is hard. I did it for a long time. I still do it sometimes, on those days when I can’t get my mental shit together or when I am looking back at the mistakes I made, but I never feel the urge to bring anyone down with me, because I know that life is up and down. Zig and zag. Back and forth. Sometimes you are on the top and sometimes you are on the bottom and you are going to see all the same people over and over, on the way up and on the way down, because they are riding the same elevator. You might as well make friends, play nice and be happy that you are not alone on the ride.
It makes them envious
There are two types of envy; malicious envy and benign envy. Benign envy is a positive form of envy that can push us to work harder to accomplish what others have accomplished because we want what they have. It’s not petty and insulting and disgruntled. It is internal and creates a sense of urgency and activity in pursuing achievement.
Malicious envy, however, sounds like what it is. It is the sort of envy that makes you angry, resentful and potentially aggressive towards what someone else has. Malicious envy exists a lot more than benign envy because it is easier. It is much easier for me to talk shit about someone and what they have accomplished than it is for me to get off my ass and accomplish it myself.
Malicious envy sounds like this.
“Fuck working towards change or accomplishment. All I have to do is criticize and ridicule what someone else has or does and make it seem like such a minor, bullshit accomplishment that I never have to feel inferior to them. Even though I secretly, really want to accomplish what they just did. But that requires effort and I don’t want to do that part so whatever that person just did is stupid and worthless.”
Sound familiar? This kind of envy almost always follows success, in some form. Behind your back or right to your face, people are going to try to cut you down to the size they think you should be. Don’t give these people the time of day. They think you see yourself as better than them and they want what you have. Take it as a compliment that you consume enough of their thoughts that they take the time to wish you harm and move on. You have better things to do.
It makes you intimidating
You now intimidate some people. You make certain people feel inferior because you are doing some good shit in your life, and when they see that get really small and petty. They talk shit about you behind your back. They try to cut you down and bring you back to a place just below them, where you belong. They will do whatever it takes to get one step above you in whatever area of life they can find. Socially. Financially. Materially. Whatever. Because you have accomplished something by working hard and being disciplined, you are going to intimidate some people so much that they will be scared. People fear what they don’t understand and it seems like people have yet to understand that hard work and discipline is a not-so-fucking-secret recipe for success in most aspects of life.
Summary
People are going to try to strip you of a lot of the joy and accomplishment you gain through your hard work if they think it is going to put you above them. Friends. Relatives. Strangers. That’s just how it is. If you realize this, you can make an effort to keep the people who build you up as close as possible and remove yourself from those who don’t; a buffer zone against the negativity that maliciously envious people throw to bring you back down to their level. That will give you the strength to keep being great, keep making improvements, keep grasping for more and keep doing good. And that will always make you better than most.
The memory of the past can be a haunting thing. A ghost risen and unsettled – wandering aimless through the hollow spaces in our minds and projecting phantom meaning upon our lives. Because that is what the past is; a casual apparition born from experience that lingers long beyond it’s life to obscure who you could truly be.
And the ghost of the past will carry its significance as it meanders through your mind. It will drag along the regrets and the sufferings and the silent, heavy chains that bind you to a path you think you can not avoid. To that ends, the past will stop you from the present, if you give it too much life.
Despite your efforts you can not exorcise that ghastly apparition from your mind. It has a heavy clarity that makes it visible but thin. You can though slip back to those moments of your life and wonder how it all got you to where you are. You wonder what you might have become had it all been a little different. You see those past things, now set in immovable stone, and you wonder how you can change your current course given the history of it all. And through those stagnant reveries you give your past it’s faulty meaning and you think it can’t be changed.
And while it is true that the experiences of the past cannot be undone, there is a present operation that can change the meaning of it all.
We can change the meaning of our past experiences by choosing our current projects.
When Danish Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that “life must be lived forward and understood backwards” he neglected something very critical in his aphoristic explanation of meaning in life. While it is true that we have no other means of living life than forward, the backward understanding and meaning of it all is something we can change based upon what we decide to do every day we live life forward.
The word understanding means an assent to knowing, but the meaning of your past is more than just a recognitional knowing. The meaning should be an active remembering. It should be a participatory reliving. You say such and such happened to me then and because of that I am now this. You engage the past in such a way that you don’t give it any life. It’s just lies there unchanging and rotting in your head.
But we need not assent to the meaning of our past as though it were some buried, lifeless thing that can only be dug up and dissected. We can create the meaning of our past everyday by undertaking things in the present that imbibe it with deeper meaning and life.
What we decide to do in the present of our lives gives meaning to the events of our past. We get to decide, by living fully and chasing our honest ambitions and dreams, if those things that twisted and hardened us were fuel for our future successful fires or if they were the razings of our very souls.
The lying truth of the past.
The bruises of the past, though long since visible, have let their marks upon our hearts. We can feel the stretching, aching, tenderness of them as we try to reach for trust and happiness and peace. That hurt would have us confined, if we let it keep it’s meaning. Instead we have a choice, and more than that, a duty.
What we do today – the things we go after professionally or personally – the relationships we foster and cherish, the lives we choose to live – those are the things that give meaning and substance to our past. What we undertake today will change significance of what we have before endured.
And if we decide to live slowly and reluctantly – in the dark, rustling shadows of pasts obscurity, taking great pains to point out the misfortune and hardships of our youth – then that is what the past will be for us. A dark thing that casts shade on an unnecessarily dark life.
But if instead we choose to reach boldly and forcefully towards a better future, than those difficult moments of our pasts are catalysts – fire starters that ignited our lives. We can look behind us and see the sparks that were thrown of off the anvil of life as we beat our hammer against it and forged our new destiny. We are not bystanders beholden to nature’s definition of our past. We are inventors taking the scrap metal of the past that we endured and beating it to present beauty.
We can take the whole of our pasts – the twisted, smoldering, indecipherable wreckage of it all – and make it something more by deciding, today, to take upon our shoulders that burden of greatness and achievement that the past tried to steal from us. We have the chance to frame those miserable moments in a new light by choosing to embark upon projects now that give them new meaning.
What can the past look like?
You can look back upon that lost love – the one that slipped through your outstretched fingers like smoke refusing to be caught – and see in it something that was not ready to be contained. You can give that broken heart a meaning approaching fondness though, by taking the lessons you learned and deciding to move madly towards a new love – towards the possibility of love at all. One that is not an insubstantial specter of the love that you had lost, but one that is the perfect reflection of the love you always knew you could create. And in doing so, in changing the meaning of that past loss by using it for greatness today, you see that your broken heart was necessary to make you whole today.
And that poverty that had you eating hand to mouth – you can take the remembered hunger pangs and shame of having so little when those around you seemed to have so much, and you can use it as a fuel to power your want to achieve professional success. And when you have climbed that mountain of achievement, that poverty of your past will be the hallmark of your success and you will return to it with affection, as though you could not have achieved without it.
Or those childhood moments of bullying from your tormentors – you can take those terrible words and those brutal bashings and you can see in them a hardening. Like a hammer striking iron. And now you are made of a substance that can not be broken because you have been tempered to an invulnerable strength. You take back the meaning of the pain that others gave you so long ago and you turn it into the armor that you wear today.
What will you be today?
This is not about having perspective on your past. This is about creating the meaning of your past everyday by choosing to make it matter through your actions. By choosing to seek out your greatness in the present moment you are saying that your past was necessary to make you possible. You could only have come to be who you are through the struggles to which you endured and you could not be what you are without those pains and scars and hurts and miseries.
You have the responsibility to continually choose and re-choose what you are and what you have been. It is your story to tell, in the end. And in that choosing lies your strength to reclaiming a ghostly past that would have you haunted. And you are left with one last aphorism that should feed your every moment. You must choose today what you will do to make yesterday a reason, not an excuse.
As the year winds down, and the holidays approach, we are reminded that this is the season to be grateful and giving. It is the season in which we seek to return to those we love, the gift of their presence in our lives. It is a season where we recognize the role that family and friends play in our lives and we celebrate our times with them in cheer.
But there is a special thank you we should recognize and celebrate as the year draws to a close and we look back at all that we have accomplished. And that is the rare and perpetual thank you to the sacrifice and guidance of those that came before us. Those people who gave up something of themselves, or something of what they could have had, in order to see us succeed.
It is because of those people that came before us – those parents and grandparents, aunts or uncles. Those friends that become family and the family that is more like friends. Those heroes of our lives who braved the storms of raising us or walking with us or saving us from the worst of ourselves while bringing out the best in us – those people sacrificed for us and put us on a path towards our greatness.
For what would we be without them in our lives? Without those blazers of trails. Without those takers of wounds and those fighters of fools. Without those shoulders we have cried upon and those footsteps we have followed?
As Isaac Newton once said;
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
And that is what we must be thankful for in those that came before us. We must be thankful for their sacrifices and for letting us see further by standing atop their weary shoulders.
The recognition of the people who came before us is something that we often forget in our haste to push past what they accomplished. We know that we can accomplish more – that we should accomplish more – because of the contributions of the people that came before us. That is the hidden gift given to us by those that helped us build our lives.
And though you may think that those that came before you sacrificed nothing to see you succeed, I ask you to take a closer look. See the wrinkles that tease the corners of their eyes and the tired that fades to exhaustion behind the color? That is the worry they carried for you when you were making a mess of your life and they could do nothing but sit and watch. See the hitch in their step from the crook of their back that leans them over like wilted flowers? That is the burden of a thousand small hopes that they carried for you when the world would rather you have none.
I beg you to look closer at those people that came before and see what they might have given to you to ensure you would succeed. Because you don’t always see the calluses or scars on the people who made you possible until you get real close – until you pull them in for an embrace and whisper a thank you in their ears. Only then do you feel the leather of their hearts, so strong and tight and ready to burst at having carried so much weight for us over the years.
Me, I recognize my mother for carrying much of my early burdens for me, and who still aches to carry my present ones despite the basket of her own. She has been the greatest champion through my life and she outfitted me with weapons and armor to survive a painfully diminishing world. I owe her more than just my thanks. I owe her a heart that keeps on loving and a mind immune to breaking.
I am eternally grateful for that giant of a woman who allowed me to stand atop her shoulders. And despite the etchings of hurt I have engraved onto her heart, my hope is that I have left something of my love and accomplishment in there to fill those marks I made and make her glow with something akin to pride. Like the Japanese practice of Kintsugi, I hope that the cracks of pain I created can be filled with the gold of my success, to which I owe to her above all others.
I recognize my uncle. And though he is gone from this world it is from him that I learned the lessons of manhood that I carried to adulthood. It is to him that my son owes his gratitude as well, because without the instruction of my uncle I would not have been able to properly carry the responsibility of fatherhood. I would not have known what it was in a man that is capable of tenderness and love.
I recognize my sisters who look to me for guidance but often ended up guiding me. Through our shared suffering in the early years and through our shared resilience in our later ones, they pushed me hard to be a man who could take the place of the father we never had. And though I still often fall short of perfect, brotherly love, I know that the expectation in their eyes has a way of steering me forward and pushing me towards more.
I recognize my friends, the ones that call me out on my bullshit. The ones that walk beside me when I am a weak and aching and living less than what I should. They never let me falter and always hold me up to a light I sometimes can not see.
And maybe you honestly didn’t have anyone like this. Maybe your whole life you carried yourself and you were the one who got broken on the rocks by trying to find your way in this world. If that is that case, then thank yourself for how far you have come, with how little you had to work with and forgive yourself for the mistakes you made along the way. You were too small and too fragile and too helpless be able to save yourself from all the pain.
It’s ok though.
You grew up. You are more now. You became strong and you stopped being afraid of the storms that life threw at you to stop you from finding your way and you became the giant that will have the shoulders for future generations to stand.
So I ask you to take this time, as gifts are given and cheer is spread, to look deeper at those people who came before you in your life. All that people that surround your life. Do not see in them what is external, but look far inside their souls. Find that place in their heart that beats for you and give it softly the peace and gratitude it needs and deserves by lifting them up upon your now lofty shoulders so that they can see what heights they helped you reach. Show them the world you were able to create because they were their to help you imagine it.
Do not let this day pass – this hour, this minute, this second – without giving your love and thanks to the giants of your lives whose shoulders you stood upon in order to find your way.
I can not tell you how many times I have been forced to start my life over. Sometimes I have been forced to start over because I ran my life into dead ends and sometimes I have made the choice to start over because I was not satisfied with where I was headed. It is something I seem to have a knack for, if only because I also have a knack for getting into trouble, associating with the wrong people, or constantly moving in directions I shouldn’t be moving in.
As a youth this translated into expulsion, arrests, drugs, alcohol. These events set me up for a steep uphill climb to accomplish anything worthwhile in my life. It ruined friendships. It hurt people close to me. It constantly stole away the possibility of making something of myself, but I eventually managed the climb.
As an adult my destructions are a little more pedestrian, but just as terrifying and deadly to a middle-aged man who wants to live and love passionately and authentically all while making as big of an impact in the world as he can. This translates into stagnating in jobs I hate. Staying in relationships that drain me. Associating with people that bring me down.
All of these are common things have an ability to slowly erode your life and make it something unrecognizable. But because of my level of comfort and familiarity with fixing broken things, I always seem to be able to recover from the disasters I make of my life.
One of the reasons is that I have never accepted my present day circumstances or situations to be reflective of my future success. Despite being born and living in fatherless poverty. Despite suffering at the hands of indescribably cruel people. Despite my predilections towards terrible decisions that derail my life, I have never allowed myself to be boxed into a life that I did not think I could change.
Accepting Responsibility VS. Taking Blame
“What happens to us may not be our fault, but how we think about it is our responsibility.” – William Knaus – Pioneer of the Stoic based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
One of the most important things I learned early in life is the difference between responsibility and blame. I absolutely take responsibility for the shit storms I create, but I never fill myself with blame. Well… I try to never let the blame get out of control.
I don’t think there is any value in carrying around the weight of blame for the things that we mess up in life or the situations that we find ourselves in. Blame is a stagnant river. It doesn’t move anything. It just festers and stinks and grows poisonous inside you. Responsibility, though, is an active thing. It is a flowing water that carries the event away while leaving the sediment of wisdom for future success. It allows you to learn, grow and move forward with a renewed sense of understanding and hope for what you can now do.
Perhaps this idea is best summed up through the work of Martin Seligman. A pioneering psychologist who changed most of what we known about human behavior and championed the movement of Positive Psychology. Seligman’s work was heavily influenced by the earlier work of Aaron Beck and his stoic based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Learned Helplessness
Martin Seligman pioneered the idea of “learned helplessness“. This is the concept that people who are subject to repeated adverse stimulation or situations where one is unable to escape will find themselves unable to consider the opportunities for escape in future situations or circumstances that are similar, even though escape or avoidance is a viable solution in those future situations.
To put it more simply, people who are hit early in life with difficult situations they cannot get out of, give up on themselves and accept the “helplessness” of their situation when they are faced with those same situations later in life.
This learned helplessness is the root cause of so many of our problems in starting over in life and rebuilding the things that have been broken; including our hearts, minds and bodies. We accept early on that we are helpless to prevent certain pains and situations of life so we learn a response of helplessness and carry that with us, ensuring that when we are faced with those similar situations of heartbreak, emotional upheaval, or pain that we will be unable to do anything about it.
Learned Optimism
To counter the malaise of this behavioral theory Martin Seligman presented an adaptable alternative in his expansive elucidation of his Positive Psychology ideas. The proposed alternative to a life of Learned Helplessness is one of Learned Optimism.
Learned Optimism is the idea that, just as we can develop a predilection towards pessimism, we can also develop a predilection towards optimism. Now for those of you who have read many of my blog posts, you know I don’t go in for the overtly happy bullshit of positivity. Learned Optimism isn’t that.
Learned optimism is developing a resilience to the ups and downs of life and understanding that, when bad things happen, even if they happen repeatedly, they are usually just unlucky situations and not reflections of future success.
To that ends, we can learn how to let those past experiences go and move forward; putting our efforts into rebuilding our lives instead of remaining trapped in the “learned helplessness” of our previous experiences.
Where to Begin When Everything Seems to Be Ending?
As the author Lewis Carroll so eloquently put it,
“Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end; and then stop.”
It may seem like nonsense, but it is reasonable advice when you have no fucking clue how to pick yourself back up after a hard life fall.
The truth is, where you start from when you need to rebuild your life should not be where you left off. That is like trying to fix a broken relationship by simply returning to the moments just before it broke. That is obviously not where you want to start. You need to go back further. You need to go back to when it was clean and pure and start rebuilding from there. That is the same when you are trying to rebuild your life.
The place you start at when you need to rebuild your life is at the very beginning and that very beginning is deep inside you. You need to get honest about what you value and what you want to be in the world and stop accepting the results of the past as the possibilities of the future. You need to look at how your past experiences are contaminating your expectations and experiences about your future and you need to relearn how to react to life.
You need to go so far back inside yourself that you give yourself the opportunity to completely reinvent yourself if you have to, because sometimes that is what life calls for; a complete reinvention of the person you were in favor of the person you want to be.
Before it was an annoyingly catchy lyric in a late 90’s one hit wonder song, the Stoic philosopher Seneca said that,
“Every new beginning is some other beginning’s end.”
And that’s your fucking mantra right there.
That relationship that is ending right now is the beginning of another one. That mistake you just made is the beginning of the next mistake. That failure you just had is the beginning of the next one. Those are your learning moments – the ones that make rebuilding easier in the future because you now know how not to build. You get to look at every mistake you make and every situation you fuck up as the start of something else.
Summary
You are going to break sometimes. You are going to make terrible decisions, be thrown into terrible situations and generally make a mess of your life sometimes. You are going to hit the wall so hard that it shatters your soul and you are going to think that there is no way that you can put yourself together again. But those breaking moments do not define the possibility of you. They are unlucky situations that are a part and parcel of living. They happen to everyone to some degree and it is those people who have the ability to frame these situations properly, and begin again with a renewed sense of optimism in the outcome, that are able to rebuild a broken life.
We should in fact hold close those moments where life breaks you – those are your cornerstones. Those are your unique moments that anchor you to the world and define who you are. We are built from adversary not from our success. You build your entire identity on those moments of struggle because they are the important things that fundamentally change you and make you, you.
So run towards the walls. Don’t be afraid to break. You are not fragile. You are indestructible because all you need is one small piece to rebuild. One tiny shred of hope is all it takes to start it all over again and there is always a shred of hope to be had. You just have to begin again, starting from scratch to build what you want.
It is this time of year – when the trees have dropped their brightness and thrown off the burden of their colorful autumn coats – that I sit alone outside my house and listen to the early winter wind rip through bare branches; straining them to cracking and pulling along the promise of a soon biting cold.
I sit outside and listen to that wind because it is a clear, secluded and unrelenting thing that helps me collect my thoughts. It allows me the opportunity for reflection. Reflection about the goals I want to accomplish. About those I already have. Reflection about the things and people I need to keep in my life, and those I must let go. Reflection about my place in the world, and the ripples I want to leave behind. It is a place of solitude, self-imposed.
Don’t misunderstand me. It is no lonely thing, even if I use the word loneliness on occasion to describe it. Being alone does not have to be lonely, anyway. I agree with Jean Paul Sartre when he said;
“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.”
In fact, there is a hidden depth in loneliness that some prefer to call solitude. I appreciate philosopher Paul Tillich’s distinction between the two words, but I want to use the two terms as one for this articles and say that there is so much opportunity and space in the loneliness of solitude for understanding, reinforcing and doing. It is, in fact, a comfortable place for occasional introverts like me. People who need to retreat to places of emptiness so that they can refill.
But more than that, solitude is also the place where many great men and women have labored over their dreams – doing the hard things that others cannot or will not do in order to be more and do more.
What I mean to say is that there are moments in life – when you creep to the edge of your comfort zone and peer out over the yawning abyss of possibility – that upon looking back to see who might join you on the next adventure of mind and body and soul, you can see that you utterly alone in moving forward for what you want.
It is in those moments of occasionally looking back that I have come to understand that we are forced to pay a price for trying to live outside our comfort zones and for trying to grow – ourselves or something bigger. We must pay a price for daring to do things that others insist will fail. A price for thinking the deep, personal thoughts that help us to understand ourselves and the world. And a price for building and creating our places in a world we want to live in and that price is something I call the Loneliness Tax.
What is the Loneliness Tax?
“To live alone one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both – a philosopher.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
The loneliness tax is the cost of adhering to your ideals and for making the hard choices to live a life that others do not imagine possible. Not a life distracted by the thoughtless and undisciplined meanderings of trivial pursuits, but a principled life governed by introspection, growth and a want to do great things. That life will have you eating, drinking and thinking alone more often than not. Not because you come to enjoy being alone, but because there are so few people willing to sit with you through the messy business of making something great of life.
The loneliness tax is the occasional price you pay for being a unique, unrelenting, constantly thinking and perpetually doing thing in a world that asks of you to sit back, relax and consume instead of create. It is a price that is much too high for some, hence we see so few honest and real thinkers and doers in the world.
How much is the Loneliness Tax?
At first it might seem like you are paying a lot. You will lose friends and you will move on from petty pursuits that once pleased the lesser you. You will spend a lot of time alone; reading, thinking, planning, doing. You will pay a lot into loneliness at first, when you are trying to do something great, because achieving something more is at first an exercise in getting rid of what is holding you back.
And it might seem like it’s too much sometimes – that you are sacrificing too much for your dreams – but the loneliness tax is not merely something given against one’s will. It is a contribution as well. An insurance that a thinker – a dream chaser and doer of hard things – gives in order to hold fast and strong to the deepest possessions we have; our thoughts, our dreams and our actions.
So do not be afraid. The loneliness tax is mitigated by seeking out others that share your vision for greatness in whatever medium it is. Entrepreneurship. Personal Development. Exercise. Health. Love. Spirituality. Whatever you are pursuing alone right now, there are people out there willing to pursue it with you.
We are in an amazing place in history. Technology has given us the ability to connect with others across great distances and time. The modern age has put us in a great spot for finding great company. We have a historical catalog of artists, thinkers, dreamers and doers to draw from – hidden in books and art and music. But we do not only have those great men and women loners that were lost to time. No, we have modern loners as well – lost in the confines of message boards and forums and meetups and more – who are searching for the same things we are.
Seek them out. The past and the present. They need all of you as much as you need them and together you are going to change a lot more than apart. You pay the loneliness tax early, and then, as you build the life, or business or body or world or whatever that you desire, the loneliness tax is forgotten because it is paid by all of you together. It becomes a contribution of gratitude that you pay forward to others just starting the journey of self discovery and betterment.
Summary
“The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.” – Omar Khayyam
You will have to pay the loneliness tax if you are going to forge anything great in this life. When you set out to change your situation, or build something bigger than you, you will find yourself creating a distance between the things and people who do not serve your vision and loneliness, as they will attempt to pull you back to those old habits or distract you from the important decisions that you know you must make.
But you must remain unswayed – to pursue what is meaningful to you – despite the early cost of it all. Because, as you move towards what you want, you will find others also moving in that direction. Other’s willing to split the cost with you. The tax will lessen and you will find that you are not always alone and it will not always cost so much to live a life so thoughtful and bold and purposed.
So as you feel the weight of internal conversation, solitary movements and a sudden longing for another to be there with you – to understand and appreciate the moments on the journey with you – realize that you are giving deeply for your unique vision and purpose of the world. Giving deeply for the depth you’re digging. And giving willingly for something that you believe in. It is then that you must accept the loneliness tax. The tithe required of thinkers. The occasional philosophers cost. And the alms for being a doer.
It is often said that time heals all wounds, but that is a sentimental lie told by people who have no other advice to give when faced with the wounds of living. Yes. Time can be the great eroder of pain, the emancipator of twisted hearts and the softener of cruel memories. Yes. The steady march of time can put all wounds behind us and give all experiences their reasons – reasons we do not know in the moment. And yes. Time can certainly dull the sharp, stabbing edges of experience, but time itself is no healer. Your time must be used appropriately to heal fully from the wounds that you suffer in your life, otherwise those old hurts will haunt you wherever you happen to go.
So how must we participate with time to heal those things that harmed us and set right the broken things of our experience?
Find Distance and Perspective
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard
We must use our time to find the proper distance and the proper perspective to view those events that harmed us. The further we get from the experiences of our wounds – those things that broke and battered us in our lives – the easier it is to push them off into the periphery of our life’s vision and not let them be the focal point of our living.
This is not a striving to ignore them or to push them so far that we pretend they do not exist. No. This is gaining of context. It is putting into proportion the hurts that we have felt and being able to see them in the healing landscape of objectivity. To heal the wounds of experience, the right perspective is necessary. Sometimes that perspective can be found right away and other times it takes an uphill climb through the worst sort of misery to crest the peak of that experience and find the perspective necessary to see the beauty in that pain.
Great hurts in life become the driving force behind our experiences. We return to them often and use them as calibration mechanisms to our current experiences. If we have been cheated on, all relationships hold the potential for infidelity. If we have been abused, all relationships hold the potential for abuse.
But the steadfast movement of time allows for a distance to be put between those hurtful experiences in your life, and the present experiences of living, and that distance creates the space needed for change. It creates that whisper-thin buffer between emotion and action and it allows you to peer honestly at your new experiences, not entirely shadowed by the hurt, so the can be understood for what they truly are.
Most wounds we suffer in life cause us pain because we lack the perspective on what they will bring us in the future. We are anchored to the march of time and we do not understand the beauty of our present pains until they are far back in the rear-view mirror of our lives. Only then are we able to see how the wounds we suffered have made us who we are today. How, if we had not suffered them, we would be unrecognizable to ourselves, and in fact, something less than what we now are.
Find Strength and Fortitude
I am sure most people have heard the famous quote by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche;
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
But what does that mean? There are so many layers of meaning that it deserves it’s own article, but I will give you the cliff notes here.
On the one hand it means, by virtue of the fact that you are still alive after something damaging happened to you, you are stronger for living through the experience. I know that it does not often feel this way. Especially with those things that truly work to ruin us. But just by existing through a difficult situation you are made stronger in ways you may not even recognize, until time has tempered them down into the hardened things that can not be broken again.
This idea refers to a common psychological and biological phenomenon known as hormesis. Hormesis is the concept that where a stressor at large doses might do harm, a stressor at small, controlled doses can actually have a positive impact on future growth. We see the effects of hormesis first hand in exercise. We punish our bodies, tearing muscles and stressing the heart and body, to acclimate the body to a higher level of performance in the future. The same concept applies to mental stressors. We can use them in order to strengthen our mental resilience and capacity to handle future pains.
The above quote also refers to something Nietzsche was adamant about in his philosophies. The fact that it is the negative conditions of our lives that define us more than the positive conditions of our lives. We are made resilient and strong by going through our sufferings, by seeking them out even, and by using those sufferings as the cornerstones of our identities and building around them the foundations of our lives.
We all have those moments in our lives that have shaped the very core of our being and I guarantee that the ones that shaped you the most were events that seemed negative at the time but, as time passed and you continued to live, turned out to be the very things that needed to happen to make you who you are today. Those weaking moments, in retrospect, turned out to be the very conditions we needed to create in us our undeniable future strength.
Find Closure and Relief
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” – Mark Twain
The final gift of time in moving towards our recovery of disastrous events is the space it allows in forgiving – in forgiving ourselves for our mistakes that caused our pain and in forgiving others the pain that they have caused us. And that is perhaps the hardest, but most necessary, action that time requires of us in fully healing.
Forgiveness is not an easy process. Before it comes resentment and anger, but after it comes a final peace. It is not a giving up of your grievances against those things that hurt you, it is an acceptance that they have happened and an ownership of what you will now do with them. It is returning the power of your life back towards yourself instead of leaving it in the harming hands of others.
Forgiveness gives us closure. It ends the chapter of pain and begins a new chapter that starts fresh and free of old injuries. It allows us to leave behind the old wounds and move courageously and without trepidation towards the new ones that will inevitably come. Because that is what life demands of you. A constant and courageous movement towards the potential for new wounds.
Summary
In all truth, our wounds do not ever really heal, because healing suggests that what was hurt returns to what it was. healing means that we are waiting to be cured of something that will bring us back to what we were. That is not what happens with time and that is not what happens when we recover from the pains of living. We will never be able to return to what we were after a deep hurt and we should never want to.
What is a better goal with time is to repair our injuries. To make ourselves stronger and more resilient in the process of healing by using the lessons we learned from them as catalysts for deeper growth and understanding – about ourselves and about the world.
Repairing is a different process than healing. Repairing takes ingenuity, creativity, additional materials and steadfast work to fix what was broken. Healing is passive and repairing is active and that is what time requires of us to be fixed. It requires us to take command. To use our time wisely in repairing ourselves, so that we are ready for the next wound that comes. Time well used can be a great surgery against the wounds of yesterday, but only when our time is spent actively pursuing the remedies of repair and when we use the pains that we come to know in life as reminders of a life fully experienced- as a reminder that there can be no living without the occasional dying in between.
As a cause is something principled and aiming towards a deeper commitment or rise to action in the world, it is not an exaggeration to say that I have spent most of my life as a lost one. I was a directionless meaning that was barely in the world. And by having no direction, I whipped around aimlessly, like a bag in the wind and created a great deal of pain to those that got close to me.
The way that I grew up made it hard to hold a meaning. When everything is taken from you, you do not think that you deserve to have anything to call your own. So meaning is on of the first things a hard childhood will have you jettison. You can not yet see the worth of it, so you do not yet know how hard you should hold on to it.
The only thing you ever carry with you are the questions around the reasons why your life is like it is. There must be a reason why your father would leave you, and your sisters, poor and alone. A reason that would cause your family to suffer at the hands of violent, vicious men. That would cause the constant gnawing hunger in your belly from lack of food. The reason for the litany of insults and beatings from your peers over your poverty and your life. That would cause the never ending cycle of physical, emotional and mental abuse that comes from a hard and desperate childhood.
But I never found a reason for these things in any of the places I looked. I never found the reasons in my anger. My insubordination towards authority. My hatred for everything. My drug abuse. My physical and emotional self destruction. My desire to be dead. All I ever found was deeper gifts of pain from a world that I thought didn’t want me. And because of that I pushed that world further away and I dug myself deeper into giving them nothing but my suffering.
And thorough all of this I ached for a kindness out of life. I looked for something gentle from it after it had given me so much pain – as though it might be sorry and willing to make amends. I searched in relationships. I searched in friendships. I searched in academics. I searched in arts and religion, and everything in between, but there was always something missing in the answers that I found. My thoughts and ideas about people and life were corrupted by the pains I had been dealt as a child. Nothing ever stuck because it had nothing substantial to stick to. Until finally, with one foot in the grave and another bound for hell, I found what I was looking for.
It was a dusty book, weathered to the point that the cover was unreadable. It was thick with yellowed pages and weighed enough to make me think twice about picking it up. But pick it up I did and opening it unleashed that broken down lignin smell of vanilla and old grass that is the hallmark of old books. And with the perfume came the words. An encylopedia of philosopcial wisdom that was my first introduction to the ideas that would change my life.
I found the answers I so desired in the words and ideas of philosophers, old and new. The virtue ethics of the ancient Greeks like the Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans and more. The agreeable skepticism of men like David Hume. The Will to Power and acceptance of pain as a strengthening thing, espoused by Friedrich Nietzsche. The modern day freedom ethics of Simone De Beauvoir and the acting, breathing, feeling, loving, essential and individual philosophies of the existentialists; to name but a few of the philosophical influences I found.
These were men and women that suffered and rebelled for their wisdom, yet found a way to live a meaningful life. They were men and women that shared my misery and pain and moved towards finding the meaning in it. I found in them the kindness and understanding that I had always lacked. A kindness born of shared questions and attempts at answers. And they helped me see the meaning of the world and they gave me back my reason. And because of that a mantra of mine is from the words of the Stoic philosopher Seneca:
“I owe my life to philosophy and that is the least of my obligations to it.”
But what has philosophy given to anyone, let alone someone like me, that would save their very life?
It helps you find yourself
No one in this world can tell you who or what you are. No one can tell you what you should do in order to bring about your happiness in this world. Only you can provide those reasons. You have to go out into the world, and into your mind, and discover and decide what things are truly meaningful to you. You alone have to find those reasonable truths that lead you to your unique vision of the life you want to live.
But in order to find that path for yourself, you have to truly know yourself, and seek to truly know the world. We have to discover our values and our truths and discover the values and truths of those we interact with. We have to investigate and know these deep things about ourselves so that we can stand up for what we believe in and not be broken by those who seek to break us.
And by coming to know ourselves, we come to know more intimately everyone around us. We realize that we are not always right about the things that we believe. We see that there are many opinions in the world that may be valid if we look at them from different points of view and through different lenses of experience. We come to understand the value of a multiplicity of perspectives – as opportunities to learn and grow in our own identities by debating respectfully with the identities of others.
Philosophy fosters a mindful exploration of the world, and our place in it, and that exploration is the only way to find your why – to find the wellspring of your happiness, your meaning and your purpose. It is through a sense of constant wonder that it is possible to be perpetually awed by the world and, in the process, to always find the awe deep inside ourselves.
It balances emotions
Living a happy and fulfilled life requires, not just a clarity of intention and purpose, but also a clarity of emotion. Knowing why you are feeling, what you are feeling, when you are feeling it. Knowing how to handle and sort through difficult emotions in order to make them work for you. Philosophy introduces that clarity by helping you reason through your emotions in a way that scales them down from monoliths of uncontrollability to mere disruptions of meaningful thought.
Philosophy was a stabilizing thing for me. It was a structurally sound dwelling that I could retreat to when I was struck by the world that was crashing down upon me. It was logical, reasoned and it was full of the right sort of passion that I could use to fuel the fire of my search for meaning, direction, and understanding of the world.
As you start to understand your ways of viewing the world – as you start to understand how other people view the world – you begin to see how and why your emotions arise, and what they bring to your life. You also begin to understand why some people are capable of doing the things they do, and by understanding, you come to a certain level of compassion and forgiveness.
Many of us let our emotions rule us, without any thought for why or how they got there in the first place; why they arise as they do and how we can temper them better to reality. By getting intimate with ourselves, our thoughts, our ideas, and our philosophies about life, we can shed new light on those dark emotional things that live inside us – constantly threaten to harm us – and by bringing them to light, expose them for the timid, terrified things that they are.
It heals wounds
There are broken things in so many of us. Things that were broken long ago and were clumsily glued back together and never examined again for flaws that they contain. Philosophy brings us back to those things and allows us to examine the cracks and brittle structure of them in the light of reason and with the wisdom of ages. We examine those wounds we suffered so long ago, and by doing so, find the ways to fix them.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a highly successful, modern-day, psychological therapy shaped from Stoic philosophy, is proof that philosophy has the means, and the ability, to strengthen us before we are broken and to heal us when we break.
There is so much power in the things that we believe – in the stories that we tell ourselves – and the pursuit of philosophy is a way to change your stories by changing the way you see the world and the people in it.
Most wounds we suffer in life come from a lack of understanding. Or rather, most wounds we suffer in life come from misunderstanding. Misunderstanding of intent, of reason, of situation, of past experience. These misunderstandings come from how we view the world, ourselves, and our expectations of others.
Philosophy is a process of evaluating your ways of viewing the world so you can expose the hidden fallacies of thought that are peppered throughout your reasoning and heal the wounds of misunderstanding.
By constantly investigating our lives through the lens of philosophy, we find ways to gain strength through the wisdom of others and we find ways to create strength from the wisdom we create. We stop being victims to our wounds and we are no longer the fragile, emotional creatures we once had been. We become life-long mental health practitioners who are focused on preventative care for our own souls.
It returns you to the world
For too long I had said goodbye to this world – to my place in it and to my expectations that it was a space that was livable and meaningful to me. I wrote it off as a momentary experience that would have to be tolerated before it would just go away. But philosophy showed me how to be returned to the world, and by returning to it, give it something more in the process.
The phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty said,
“Life becomes ideas and the ideas return to life.”
And that is what I found in philosophy. The ideas presented there were pulled into my world and I then returned them to the world at large – slightly different within the recesses of my mind and slightly larger in the world, because I had added my layer to the ever-changing, ever-growing, rolling snowball of them.
Philosophy is not a pulling away from the world in favor of diving deep into books and never looking up from them. There is some of that solitary beauty, of course, but it is more about taking the ideas you find and applying them to your life in order to see if they are reasonable, important and effective at giving you the thing that philosophy most desires to give – a reasoned life, fulfilled and happy.
Philosophy does not just give you a set of skills or rules for being able to articulate coherent, logical or meaningful arguments to support a general position about how the world is. Philosophy returns you to yourself and gives you a reason for reasoning anything at all. It helps you to see the beauty in being involved in the million heartaches and pains and joys and smiles and friendships and laughters and losses of life.
During the worst of times in my life – when the pains of my childhood had become too much – when I would intentionally hurt myself in order to feel the sharp, sudden anything of pain, it was because I was so desperate to feel something for the world outside because I could feel nothing of it inside. I hurt myself externally because there was nothing to hurt of the empty that was inside me. I was lost inside my head. I was only a body that ached to be returned to his soul.
Philosophy found me and returned me to myself because it gave me reasons. It gave me direction and meaning and perspective and most of all, it gave me hope. And by returning me to myself I was able to return to the world. To a world that looked a little brighter. To a world that looked a little less lonely. And to a world that finally seemed livable.
Summary
As Seneca did nearly 2000 years ago, I speak of my obligation to philosophy, not as an academic disciplined pursuit of higher truths, but as a living, breathing, loving thing that comes out of books and into lives to change them from their meandering, potentially dangerous, course.
Philosophy can bring into focus the hazy, confused, primitive thoughts of a scared, tortured and miserable child, or it can further sharpen, shine and polish the already skillful ideas of men and women that are always looking to improve upon the level of wisdom or success they already have.
Wherever you are coming from, philosophy will take you somewhere you never expected and I guarantee it will save your life. Enjoy the ride.
The Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece, and later ancient Rome, had a great many spiritual practices that helped them to cultivate emotional calm and mental resilience in the face of tremendous adversity. These were philosophers who lived during, and experienced, the constant threat of war, exile, political upheaval, poverty, starvation, war or worse. So many aching similarities to where we now find ourselves in the world.
The Stoics knew that during a time where such things are prevalent that people need a way to better handle the constant threat of unknown calamity. People need a way to remove the sting from the random external forces that threaten to strip them of the things they hold dear in life. And it was towards this ends that the Stoics introduced the powerful practice of Premeditated Pessimism.
What is Premeditated Pessimism?
“Begin each day by telling yourself : Today I will be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness–all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good and what is evil.” – Marcus Aurelius
There are two kinds of pessimism. There is the kind of negative pessimism that seeks to cover every positive possibility in life with shit. You know the sort. Some contrarian that is always offering the soul sucking negatives to any situation. Following you around like a rain cloud and making sure you know that nothing is ever as good as it seems.
Well that is nothing remotely resembling the idea of Premeditated Pessimism.
The Stoics presented a positive pessimism that seeks to strengthen our mental fortitude and balance our emotional responses when difficult things come to us in life. The art of Premeditated Pessimism cultivates a deeper sense of gratitude for the things we have in life, no matter how little we think they are. It is not a constant wallowing in the potential miseries of life. It is a strategic, tactical pessimism that seeks positivity and emotional resilience.
Perhaps it is best described in a metaphor. I love to workout. I go hard at the gym; sometimes failing to lift some heavy ass weights and sometimes succeeding. But before I am able to do any sort of lifting I need to do some stretching and some warming up so that my muscles can endure the impact that the heavy things have on them. That is Premeditated Pessimism. It is the mental and emotional stretching and warming up required to endure the impact of life and to do the hard lifting that is sometimes required of you.
Premeditated Pessimism is deliberate, functional, mental movements used to create a more flexible and supple mind. We do not stretch our imaginations so far so as to injure our minds when we are engaging in Premeditated Pessimism. We stretch only to loosen sore emotional muscles. We use Premeditated Pessimism to break up the tension of potential hardships, losses, and troubles of life and to prepare for the future potential hardships. It is an exercise of preparation. That is the strength of Premeditated Pessimism.
Why focus on potential negatives?
Because the world is ruled by random, external factors that are completely out of our control, and when they come they immobilize us because we are not prepared for them. Life is rife with pain, suffering and misery. You will not always get what you deserve. You will have people leave or die. You will suffer physical maladies. You will have so many setbacks in life that are out of your control and to not be prepared for them is to let them affect you so strongly that they paralyze you. Premeditated Pessimism offers an alternative to that way of reacting to the world.
Improves appreciation for what you have now.
So much of the discomfort of our lives is a lack of appreciation for all the things that we have. We live in a world of constant consumption of the next great thing and we are inundated with messages that we need to have the best of everything to be satisfied. The truth is, we merely need to find ways to appreciate the things we already have and imagine what our lives might be like if we did not have those things. By taking time to dwell on what our lives might be like if we lost the things we have, no matter how old or worn out they may be, we can come to develop a deeper sense of gratitude for them and stop looking to other things for a sense of satisfaction.
Prepare for the hardships of the world because that is the truth of how the world is.
It has been proven that your brain does not distinguish between what is physical and what is psychological from an experience standpoint. The same neurohormonal responses will occur no matter if a thing is physically happening to you or if you are imagining it happen to you. We can use the brains non-distinguishing mechanism to our advantage by imaging the possibility of the negative things happening in our lives and, by doing so, feel the neurohormonal responses in our body. But not just feel them, get acquainted with them in an intimate way so that they do not seem so scary or overwhelming. We can leverage the body’s natural abilities to get used to overwhelming situations before they happen so that when they do, we can be present, open, and accepting of our emotional reactions when we need it most.
More emotionally stable in the face of adversity.
The Stoics emphasized a personal responsibility of reasoned emotional response and practicing Premeditated Pessimism was a means of cultivating that evenness of emotion. They did not emphasize a lack of concern for your emotions, or for the world, as is often falsely attributed to them. They focused on a deep acceptance that emotions and experiences are fluid things that come and go, and as such should not be grasped too tightly or reacted to too strongly. By reflecting on the difficult situations that arise in your life – bringing them honestly and openly into your mind and your heart – you can face them in the comfort and security of a space that is yours alone. A space that is safe, comfortable, and easy to manipulate. You get to absorb the blow of heavy emotional issues and stabilize your future reactions by coming to grips with the power of them before hand in this comfort.
Improve your ability to develop contingencies in the face of adversity.
When we are faced with crises in the world, the greatest struggle and contributor to making it worse is usually in deciding how we should react. What steps can we take to get back on track and to not let a random event derail the progress of our lives? By using Premeditated Pessimism we can mentally develop contingencies that can help us to quickly and efficiently right the ship and continue moving on in the direction we want to move. It helps us feel ready for anything that comes our way, as most of the anxiety we suffer is born of the unknown; of not knowing what might come next and how we are going to handle it. By considering it fully before hand, and developing ways to react, we remove the unknowns of reaction and we gain confidence in our forward movements.
How do I practice it?
Do not dwell on the negative, but consider it
How often have you found yourself lost in a constant stream of negative thought that turns into a torrent of negativity and emotional upheaval? This is because we do not spend personal, meaningful time with our negative thoughts and consider them in earnest. Premeditated Pessimism allows us to spend focused time on considering the negative potentials of life and gives us the comfort of being able to set them aside when the time comes to go out and enjoy life. We do not carry them with us always, showering every situation with a rain cloud of negative expectation. We bring them to mind on certain occasions to temper the stresses of life and then we let them go, returning to positivity in the present. We give ourselves a certain amount of time and space to consider the potential negatives so that we can safely, confidently and joyfully experience the usual beauty of life and not constantly drag around our negative baggage.
Think realistically, not irrationally
Premeditated Pessimism is not an irrational dwelling on the potential negatives of life. It is a realistic and pragmatic consideration of what possible things could go wrong. Realistic consideration of negative outcomes is key to using the practice effectively. All too often we get lost in unreasonable scenarios that fill us with dread because we have not taken the time to consider the actual probability of those things happening. Much of our current anxiety and worry is based around unfounded and unrealistic negative thoughts about how things will turn out. By considering the realism of all the potential negatives of situations we can expose the ridiculousness of many of them and we can undress them and we come to see that they are maybe not as scary or probable as we once thought. We release our fear of them because we see that they are unlikely and, what’s more, we see that even if they should happen, we have the strength to deal with them because we have considered our options.
Maintain positivity in the present
The art of Premeditated Pessimism is a focused and strategic one. We take moments of our days to consider the potential negative outcomes of our situations or actions, but we always strive to remain mindful and positive in the present. Our expectations about the world is not that negative things will happen, it is remaining positive that if they do, you will be ready and able to handle them; emotionally, physically and socially. We carry a deeper sense of positivity in the present because we feel prepared and capable to weather whatever storms may come. We carry expectations that things will work out, no matter what happens, because we have already developed the strength of emotion and will to handle anything.
Summary
Most people who claim that constant positive thinking should be the mantra of life are at the mercy of the ups and downs of reality and are readily disappointed when things do not turn out as they imagined. It is a hard and unrealistic façade to maintain. The sad truth of life is that you will be struck forcefully and often by many setbacks and crises, but there is a practice of occasionally thinking negatively, and always living positively, that can help you prepare for the vicissitudes of life and help you to find an inner strength to get you through them.
It is a practice that has you consider the negative potentials of living so that you can support a fuller, deeper and more grateful existence. A practice that strengthens your confidence to face down any situation. A practice the emboldens you to take more chances on the things you want and to always be ready for the things you don’t. It is not a constant negativity weighing you down with anxiety and dread. It is a strategic and tactical practice that improves the quality of living by freeing you from worry of worst case scenarios. Practice it dutifully, and with resolve, and you will find a consistent tranquility that you never thought possible.
Many of us live lives of such constant hesitation – of a determined drive to keep things as they are, no matter how undesirable they may be. We revel in the comfort and security of our everyday inconsequence and we will go to great pains to maintain the depressing status quo of our existence because we believe that it is better to be with the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
But in being with the devils we know we suffer all the same. We suffer through terrible relationships we shouldn’t be in but are scared to leave. We suffer at jobs we hate, but think we can not quit. We suffer with people and places and activities that drain us of every ounce of our will to live and fill us with such a deep, aching regret that it threatens to consume us whole.
I have a few regrets myself in life, but there are none so great as the one I hold towards the dying days of my uncle, and there is none that did so much for me in erasing the possibility of future regrets.
In those last months and weeks, as ALS ravaged my uncle’s body and left him broken and bed ridden, I turned my life away from him and towards my plodding, mediocre, comfortable existence, because I didn’t want to face the reality of the situation and the necessity of loss and change that it would bring. I wanted to ignore his passing because I was scared of what it meant for me and my future. It was selfish. It was exhausting. It was a terrible place I let myself be in.
But one day, waking from a fevered, haunting dream, I decided I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I couldn’t look away from him or the pain I had felt and I stopped making excuses, and something carried me to my car, to the hospital, to his room, and to his bed.
The room was shaded in darkness, a thin, rectangle halo of light bled in around the pulled shades, giving just enough light to make out the faded silhouette of my uncle in bed. Machines blinked and chirped and clipped and sighed – keeping him alive but stealing his living.
His head was turned towards the window and I did not know if he was awake or asleep. There was a silence in the room that only grows when sleeping, distant things are near. I knew he couldn’t turn his head – he couldn’t move at all – so I walked around the bed and I saw his open eyes reflecting the glow of the window light. They were wide and blue and full of the pain that must exist in the sky when it knows that dark, deadening storms will soon be rolling in to steal away it’s color.
And a wave of storms did hit, with a sudden furiousness, as we met eye to eye. Tears and then sobs and then racking spasms of coughing and crying rolled over him and spread to me. I sank deep into the chair by his bed, suddenly feeling the weight of months of sadness and pain, and we cried together.
We cried as the nurse hurried in to stick a suction hose down his throat to clear away the spit and snot that threatened to choke him. We cried as I reached a hand to touch the sunken leather of his skin that was nothing more than the outline of bone. We cried until we couldn’t, the storm slowly subsiding, and we were left alone together with our grief.
My uncle could not speak at this point. Our only mode of communication was a computer that read his eye movements and had a habit of not working. It worked today, if barely, and his eyes shifted feverishly for words that he wanted to say to me. I could see the frustration in them as he couldn’t quite get what he wanted on the screen and he struggled to hold back another storm of tears.
It was after many minutes that he gave up any attempt at eloquence and a mechanical voice came through the speakers of the computer with 3 simple words, “Why not sooner?”
I felt these words strike me. Like a hand to the face. A bullet through my heart. Like an arrow launched and pierced, true and full through my very soul.
And I knew exactly what he meant. Why hadn’t I come sooner? Why hadn’t I come when he had at least a bit of life and dignity left in him, however fleeting and weak. Why hadn’t I come sooner to say my goodbye in a proper fashion? Why hadn’t I come sooner when he was not physically lost to the world, so I might still feel some of the strength he had given me for some many years?
And despite how much it hurt to hear it, he was right and the words bounced through my head, unstoppable in their echoing. Why hadn’t I come sooner, before he had already gone?
I let the gravity of those words sink them deep into me as I sat with him. I promised him that everything was going to be ok. That I was going to take care of everyone while he was gone and that he didn’t need to hold on any longer. I left through another tearful goodbye, as he was overcome by racking coughs that had the nurses trying to calm him down and had them ushering me out of the room.
And as I walked away from that hospital, fresh tears stinging my eyes, I took his words – those three lonely, sad words that were the last I would ever have from him – and I decided that I would never like to hear them again from anyone or anything.
My uncle died a few days after that visit. Something in me wants to believe that he was waiting for me to come, waiting to impart one final bit of wisdom on me before he left me alone to try to be the man that he was. And that small something in me became the enormous everything in me and I never forgot those last words he gave to me and how it changed my life.
Why not sooner?
What are you putting off today that you wish you started yesterday? What endeavor could you start, right now, right here, that will change your tomorrow? Why are you waiting to pursue a dream that you desperately want to be true? Yes, it will be hard. Yes, it will be scary. Yes, you may fail. But you will never have to stare down at a growing sea of regrets that threaten to drown you where you stand. Start now. Fail now.
Why not sooner?
What love or happiness are you denying yourself right now because of your fear, your ignorance, your reluctance or your pain? Why are you waiting to reach out to someone? To say sorry. To say thank you. To say I want you. To say I miss you. To say I love you. To say everything and anything with a reckless abandon that speaks to a knowledge that it could all go away in an instant and you could be left holding nothing but the broken pieces of a heart half shared. Why are you stuck in a relationship or a situation you do not want? Why are you holding on to someone or something who is only holding you back? It’s time to let go. Let go now, sooner, and later you will find the strength to begin again.
Why not sooner?
We should want to die empty. To die knowing that we put everything out there and when we crawl into our coffins and take our forever naps we should know that we had nothing else to give and nothing else to do. We gave it everything. We didn’t wait for later to do it. We didn’t procrastinate our lives away and we didn’t let someday become never. We started sooner because we knew that the sooner it was begun, the sooner it could be finished. The sooner we could reap the rewards and the sooner we could build the life that we know is worth living.
Why not sooner?
I don’t want the voice in my head screaming down at me, why not sooner! Why haven’t you started yet? Why haven’t you done it yet? Why didn’t you talk to her sooner? Why didn’t you leave him sooner? Why didn’t you say what you meant sooner? Why didn’t you start it all sooner? Why didn’t you get rid of the things that were holding you back sooner? What the fuck were you waiting for!?!
Why not sooner?
If you wait for the right time to do something you really want or need to do you are always going to miss out on something by waiting. Always.
If something is so deep in your heart that you can feel it pulsing and aching with a desire to be released, then you have to do it now. It’s not going to get easier later. It’s not going to get better later. It’s only going to suffocate and die living inside you. Now is where you will always be and now is when you have to do the things you really want to do, because there is no promise of tomorrow.
Better that you should fail now so you can succeed in the future. Hurt now, so you can be happy in the future. Start it all now, sooner rather than later, so you can keep building it higher and higher, and fulfill the promises you have made to yourself.
So ask yourself, what you are putting off? What things are you ignoring in the dark because you are afraid to face them? Because you are afraid they are too hard, too scary, too painful to approach? What things are waiting for you to be given life? What loves are waiting for you to be born or rekindled? What life is waiting for you to be created? Those are the things that you need to drag out of the shadows and pull into the light because those are the things that are going to make you, you.
Those are the things that, after having given them life and seeing what they give to you, will have you living by the litmus test of one constant question, why not sooner?
