In this article I have the pleasure to talk about an important part of the principles by which I guide my decisions, principles which, I hope, correspond to the Stoic philosophy. Now, if you haven’t come into contact with philosophy or if you have come into contact with something “difficult” and you have the impression, like I did a few years ago, that philosophers are people who only know how to talk and less how to act, well, that is not really true. Stoicism is an extremely simple philosophical trend, and one of its founding fathers is the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who, let’s face it, was a bit good at doing things, not just writing or talking about them.
Ok, Marcus Aurelius we know who he is but what does this boy Ryan Holiday do? Well, as was the fashion in America, he dropped out of college at 19, went to work, became a marketing director for an American retailer and then founded a creative agency and started writing books and producing the podcast “The daily stoic”. At the time of the article, the guy is 35 years old and lives quietly in a house in Texas. We both have a few things in common, except that I finished college, I am not a millionaire and I haven’t started writing books. All kidding aside, I really admire Ryan for the way he talks about the applicability of Stoic philosophy today, even though Marcus Aurelius was writing by candlelight 2,000 years ago.
Returning to the topic of this article, in my opinion, this small book presents with concrete examples the essence of Stoic philosophy. The title also takes off from a writing by the famous Roman emperor mentioned above who said that our actions may encounter obstacles, but our intentions can remain constant because our minds can accommodate and adapt to new contexts, and use what is available to them, to get where they need to be. Therefore, the obstacle in the way of the objective stimulates the action, so the obstacle shows you the path forward. And this is where the first principle that I gained from sports appears and which for me translates into: when you want something and you struggle, it’s time to work, because that’s where the difference is made.
However, a parallel comes to mind now that I heard in an interview by Romanian Prof. Dumitru Borțun (I recommend it), in which he told the story about the difference in interpretation of the notion of “smart boy” in American and Romanian culture. For Romanians, being a smart boy means staying out of trouble, while for Americans it means solving problems. I am not in a position to verify the general character of this statement, but in my short experience of life in Romanian society I can say that I have met enough cases that prefer to avoid and not attack. It seems like a plausible cliché of the state of our society today, where too many people complain and too few do, but hey, that’s why I’m writing this article and you’re reading it, because it’s wiser to face our obstacles in order to move forward to what we want.
Well, further, Stoic philosophy tells us that in fact, we don’t really control what happens to us from the outside, the obstacles, but we control what we do after we encounter them. So, obstacles actually end up being opportunities to put our minds to work and create something new. What I’m talking about here already sounds idealistic, doesn’t it? Well, why? Again, in quotation marks because I have no authority to generalize, but in my bubble, I have come to identify certain reactions that we as a society have when we encounter an obstacle. What are we doing? We get angry, we blame others and look for guilty people, we get frustrated, we become confused, we get scared, we feel helpless and of course, we complain. Sure, we don’t manifest all of them at every obstacle, and not everyone does, but unfortunately, I’ve come to believe that most Romanians go in that direction.
The Stoics, however, teach us to stop burning energy with the reactions listed above. They structured this Stoic philosophy into three disciplines: perception, action, and will. On these three pillars they work with the obstacles to keep progressing. How exactly does it work?
First of all, perception is the way we look at the obstacle. We can see it as the bad luck of the world or we can say, that’s it, it happened. The story we tell ourselves about the obstacle decisively influences what we choose to do next because we can end up complaining in organized groups or we can end up overcoming that obstacle. I think we all have work to do here.
The good news is that the second discipline of Stoicism remained in Romania. Because we may not be doing so well with the first, we find it harder to implement the second which is called action. Once you accept the obstacle, you get down to business, and use your creativity, ingenuity, and find a way to resolve it, and far I don’t miss this opportunity to say without any hesitation that the Romanian people are full of creativity, and I am betting on this national value for the future. But I know that even here we have an obstacle to overcome, namely, the famous superficial work described by the Romanians by the saying “let it go because it goes like this”. An important characteristic of action defined by the Stoics is persistence, until the optimal result is achieved.
And the third discipline is called the will. This discipline we refer more to the ability to accept what you cannot change. Things like death or people trying to hurt you. The Stoics also have an expression in Latin “amor fati” which translates as love for destiny and signifies that inner power to embrace everything that happens to them. For me it’s definitely the highest stoic virtue, quite difficult to achieve, but I strongly believe that once you get that inner strength, the joy of life feels completely different.
In the end, the book helps us to change our attitude towards obstacles, from the Romanian attitude, how do we have as few obstacles as possible, to the much more productive attitude, how could we transform these obstacles into opportunities for development. And in closing, I’m going to share a 2000-year-old piece of advice from a great Roman emperor that would go something like this: Objective judgment at this very moment. Unselfish action at this very moment. Willingness to accept external factors at this very moment. That’s all you need.
The book can be bought here: https://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Way-Timeless-Turning-Triumph/dp/1591846358
