Written April 1 2021

How Stoicism Discovered Me

I found Stoicism around about 2017 and was kind of surprised to discover that Stoicism had found me already but that’s for later in this piece. OK so around about 2013 and 2014. I was not having a good time. Work was becoming increasingly unpleasant and my personal life was not all that great either, so I started spending more time doing meditation basically mindfulness training. That went on for a year or so but as the work situation grew worse, I found myself thinking is there more I can do to manage the stress caused by this situation I was caught up in?
Being me, I started researching stress management and mental resiliency and came across a reference to CBT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. So, I went out and bought the book “How to Stubbornly refuse to make yourself miserable about anything”, by Albert Ellis which my research told me was like the tome for people interested in CBT at a personal level. Ok I read the book and it kind of resonated with me, but it didn’t give me anything that really I felt could help me deal with my issues. I am not sure how, but I think while I was doing more checking on CBT I came across a reference to the fact that the core concepts of CBT were based on Stoicism.
Now I had heard of Stoicism from by Political Philosophy studies just like I knew about other Hellenic schools of philosophy like Pythagoreans and Epicureans, but it was not really something that drew my attention. Anyway, in Autumn 2017 I ordered a book called “How to be a Stoic. Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern life” by Author Massimo Pigliucci. And it was literally a turning point in my life. I read about the 4 different Stoic Virtues (Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice) and the 3 Stoic Disciplines (Action, Desire, Judgement) and it was like someone explaining clearly to me for the first time what I had only vaguely grasped instinctively. All my life I had always the attitude about keeping a clear head and not jumping to conclusions, or about being wary of depending on things out of my control and in this book I saw all that clarified explained and put into a coherent whole. It was really a revelation and like I said at the beginning of this article it was like Stoicism found me as much as I found it.
Since , 2017 I have studied and tried to live as much as I can by the precepts of Stoicism. I bought more and read more books, for example my second Stoic book was by Donald Robertson “ Stoicism and the Art of Happiness” and I’ve moved onto the Classics like “Mediations” by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca’s “Letters to Luculias”. I’ve gotten a lot out of each of these books but have now mostly settled down to reading and re-reading books by Donald Robertson and Massimo Pigliucci and one other called the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday.My reading of the classics has settled on Seneca who I feel a bit of an affinity and similarity with.
I of course struggle with implementing , absorbing, or living up to the standards and lessons of Stoicism. It is a journey not a destination in my opinion. And some parts of Stoicism that don’t align with my own reasoned opinion for example the lessons on Justice, I have interpreted differently than most of the authors I have read would. But Stoicism is a flexible philosophy, and I don’t think I am breaking any rules by having my own interpretations (hey it is Virtue Ethics after all ) but more on that later.