“So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously.” -Epictetus
A popular adage is the idea that the quality of one’s life is the quality of one’s relationships. While the value of connection and its role in our flourishing should not be diminished, the statement gives way to an externalization of our contentment, positing that its attainment rests not only on a factor outside of us, but on one known to be in a continual state of flux. Relationships change, evolve, stagnate, dissipate. We change, evolve, stagnate, dissipate. If this is true, the notion that our contentment hinges solely on the state of our connection to others at any given moment, for our sake, can’t be. What becomes significant, then, is the ability to effectively process life's transitions in a way that recognizes them as natural, both susceptible to our influence and to elements beyond it.
It’s for this reason that we can confidently anchor in the following: the quality of our life is the quality of our thinking, or more poignantly, the quality of our ability to refine our thinking. It bears emphasizing that this piece is not about the power of positive thinking, but of the power of thinking in itself, and of the risks posed by not taking an active role in that of our own. English painter Sir Joshua Reynolds is credited with saying that “there is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” The phrasing carries impact, revealing a defining quality of critical thinking that has us slow to engage it: its perceived laboriousness. It’s not so much the function of thinking we’re averse to, but the function of challenging it, of choosing to assess its merit further. Many of our judgements are passively formed. From our upbringing and any mentalities instilled, to the media consumed, it could be argued that by a certain point, much of our thinking has been done for us, and thus, we often have to feel sufficiently compelled to adjust it on our own.
“Today I escaped the power of circumstance, or rather I cast all circumstance out; for it was not outside me, but within me, in my judgments.” -Marcus Aurelius
As with most naturally occurring functions, it is easier to not challenge our thinking, to not take the time to evaluate whether our default assumptions and interpretations are actually serving us. Implicit throughout Stoic texts is the encouragement of accountability for everything that happens to us by way of owning our thoughts about them. Put another way, what we control in our experiences is how we experience them. Understood in its fullness, our capacity for thinking is the superpower that arms us to adopt the useful perspective in all things. The degree to which we’re able to extract the constructive from the destructive can be the difference between a life of reward or resent. Purposeful thinking allows us to decide what we make of any given moment.
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl knew this well. In his renowned memoir Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl tells of his reinforced understanding of self mastery and the role of choice by way of his three-year concentration camp imprisonment. Having already dedicated some of his professional life to developing psychological theories anchored in the significance of a rich inner world, subsequent Nazi capture would serve as the most conceivably severe testing ground for these ideas (including that of always having a choice in one’s response to their environment, no matter the degree of suffering). In the book, Frankl recounts an experience after imprisonment where someone showed him a photo of prisoners lying around in crowded bunks with dull, exhausted looks. The individual laments the photo, exclaiming what a pity it is. To the individual’s surprise, Frankl not only doesn’t share the lamentation but questions it, later detailing how the memory for him held an entirely different connotation.
“We were sick and did not have to leave camp for work; we did not have to go on parade. We could lie all day in our little corner in the hut and doze and wait for the daily distribution of bread (which, of course, was reduced for the sick) and for the daily helping of soup (watered down and also decreased in quantity). But how content we were; happy in spite of everything.”
He then adds that when he explained this, “[his] listeners understood why [he] did not find the photograph so terrible: the people shown on it might not have been so unhappy after all.” If the ability to look almost fondly on an image representative of a circumstance so horrific isn’t indicative of the power that is refined thinking, we’d be hard pressed to find an example that is.
Few of us will find ourselves in a situation so dire as Viktor Frankl’s, and yet we hesitate to challenge ourselves even still. In our avoidance of the labor of thinking lies unconsidered dangers, not least of which the conflating of our own value with the circumstance we’re in, or the disempowering act of reducing any individual or group to a single assumption. The passive thinker knows not the consequences perpetuated by unchecked agreement, fearing instead the perceived consequences of dissenting thought (chastisement, exclusion). Just as our function of cognition enables us to think our way past any present pain, so too can it enable us to think beyond rashness, impulse, self pity, groupthink, and anything else that gives way to harm if left unscrutinized. Engaging our capacity for refined thinking may be our most powerful daily act. The well employed art of thinking is an aide at our side, admonishing or encouraging what’s necessary for our good. This aide also prevents us from calling on her superfluously, that is, from thinking too much.
Bringing with it a set of different risks, overthinking yields undesired outcomes as much as under thinking: missed opportunities, unhealthy rumination over possibilities unconfirmed, mental arguments wholly self developed that take on a detrimental external life, to name a few. Overthinking is not driven by wisdom but anxiety, likely rooted in uncertainty of whatever is or is not presented, or of a failure to assess what is critically necessary in the context of our aim. Thinking deeply is not thinking anxiously. What we’re to seek is not excessive, undisciplined thinking, but refined processing aimed at useful outcomes. The virtuous cycle of effective thinking is such that doing it well fosters sensitivity to when we’re not. The trained thinker knows when to set herself back on course. The trained thinker also recognizes the inevitability of not always being in the presence of the same.
"Human beings are here for the sake of one another; either instruct them, then, or put up with them.” -Marcus Aurelius
Productive thinking—the autonomous processing of inputs in a manner that yields benefit—requires the acknowledgement of the natural tension that follows when the rational meets the seemingly irrational, or any external factor not apparently aligned to our intent. It requires the observation of the obvious signs and an awareness of the ever-present role of any number of indifferent factors. In Discourses and Selected Writings, slave-turned-teacher Epictetus encourages “counter[ing] temptation by remembering how much better will be the knowledge that you resisted.” Here he describes the future joy that can be drawn upon when one chooses a thoughtful response in the moment (“temptation,” in this sense, representing the unchallenged acceptance of our initial thoughts). As it bears repeating, our focus is to remain on the choosing, engaging our faculty of discernment to determine how we’re going to interpret and respond to any occurrence. A rejection can be a symbol of your unworthiness, or a reminder of the indelible roles of timing, preference, and alignment and of the opportunity to remain ready for when these factors converge. An accident can be the world conspiring against you, or simply another act in the unbiased chaos of life from which you’ll arise with deepened appreciation. We temper the blow of chaos when we accept it as our companion, choosing, in all things, to adopt the useful view.
Objectively honest as they were, the Stoics never claimed that there would one day be a world without hindrances and challenging personalities, and thus our ability to live contented, productive lives could never be dependent on this. A life of virtue is sufficient in and of itself, and could more so be the case even because of this. As presumed obstacles increase, so too should our character in its ability to free us from unhelpful responses. The developed thinker is one who can productively exist within the tension of their aims and the non-compliant world we occupy, acknowledging dissonance as both unsurprising and sharpening. Epictetus advises that it is not an act of kindness to join our friends in wrongheaded, unhelpful thinking. It is not an act of kindness to join ourselves in this, either.
"Everywhere and all the time it lies within your power to be reverently contented with your present lot, to behave justly to your present neighbors, and to deal skillfully with your present impressions so that nothing may steal into your mind which you have not adequately grasped." -Marcus Aurelius