Day 33
I had never heard about Epictetus until I started getting interested in happiness. Epictetus (I love saying the name) was a Greek Stoic philosopher who lived from 55AD to 135 AD. As many philosophers, he did not write his own theories. One of his pupils, by the name of Arrianus, wrote about his teachings in two books: the Discourses and the Handbook. Epictetus began his life as a slave but still managed to attend lectures by Stoic philosopher Rufus until he was freed. He then began teaching philosophy in Rome, and later on, founded a philosophy school in Greece.
Epictetus believed that happiness comes from attaining wisdom, which he defines as the ability to truly understand and accept that you can only control your own actions and not other people’s actions or even fate. He also believed that it is when we surrender our emotional attachment to things that are beyond our power to control, that we are able to maintain our tranquillity of mind.
There are many things we have power over. We can choose the food we eat, the people we befriend, the clothes we wear, the words we say, the activities we participate in. We can decide to live in the Bahamas for a year, to move to the suburbs, to give our life savings to a cause, to get plastic surgery, to run a marathon. And with every decision we make, we have to be ready to assume the consequences; if you give up all your savings, you just might end up broke!
On the other hand, there are many things we have no control over. For instance the weather! We can complain all we want when it is minus 35, it is not going to change anything and, as a matter of fact, complaining about it only adds to our misery! It is also not useful to handout a Proper Public Behaviour Manual to people who we deem would benefit from it; it wouldn’t change anything. We cannot control how people act.
Some people need to always feel in control. And, when they are not, they start feeling anxious, nervous and stressed out! When we were trapped in the cable car a couple of weekends ago, we didn’t have any control! We couldn’t do anything but wait. We were up there, my brother, my sister-in-law, my nieces, my nephew, my daughters and I, stuck in mid air and…. I began singing. I thought, if I’m going to be there for a while, I want some entertainment!
Happiness is the ability to make choices that will bring us joy, always evaluating the possible consequences of our actions on our life and that of others. Happiness is also being able to learn to surrender emotionally when we are confronted with situations beyond our control.
No comments:
Post a Comment