Apostoic

Dying well: Stoic Heroes Who Mastered Calmness

Sentenced to death for crimes of speech, Socrates met his end at the bottom of a cup of poison after being convicted of impiety against the gods by a jury of 500 Athenians. A revered teacher and philosopher even in his own time, he had stood alone and argued with reason and logic against an entire court taking the other side a few too many times. Whether he was right or not would be a question for a historian, but the fact is that he thought he was, and the number of people taking the opposite position meant absolutely nothing to him. He stood up and spoke what he believed to be true and wise, and backed it with sound reason. For this inconvenient behavior, he was sentenced to death, but had such respect and love among the people of Athens that an alternative was offered. He could shut up and leave, banished forever. If he chose to stay and speak, he would die in a manner of his own choosing. He chose the latter. A famous painting by French artist Jacques-Louis David depicts the man, one arm reaching calmly for the cup of poison, the other raised in a gesture of a final point. He calmly drank a cup of painful death while still teaching and reasoning, with followers around him grieving and pleading with him. The artist depicts the young man weeping whose duty it was to administer the cup, and Plato sitting in absolute dejection and sorrow at the foot of his couch. He proclaimed to those around him that “They can kill me, but they cannot hurt me.” He was not his body, he was his spirit and reason, and they were powerless to do anything to it. Socrates died well, and history continues to read, revere, and study his reasoning and philosophy to this day. In a quote attributed to Terry Pratchett, “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.”

William Wallace was cruelly and brutally tortured to death, refusing to bend the knee to an invading authority that he would not recognize after a life of speaking and fighting for the independence of Scotland. With allegiance to God and country on his lips, he preferred the unimaginable pain of having his body broken and cut apart to uttering one word against his convictions. William Wallace died well.

Twelve out of twelve of the apostles died well, refusing to recant what they knew to be true and right. Eleven of these were put to death by methods ranging from beheading to crucifixion, and one died well of old age, in exile, still writing and proclaiming the teachings and revelations of Christ.

Fiction has also romanticized what seems to be a powerful desire for both men and women alike. I recently watched an episode of the popular historical fiction Vikings, in which a man was put to death by beheading. The village gathered all around to watch, not to discover whether or not their neighbor would die, but to see if he would die well. This mattered to them far more than the theft for which he was convicted. A chapter of Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane opens with the rugged hero riding into a town in some commotion, to hear the news from the first passer by that a bandit had just been hung. The only question on Solomon Kane’s lips? “Did he die well?”

Living Well: The Stoic Link Between Life and Death

“The art of living well and the art of dying well are one” – Epicurus

What if our urge to act with calmness and grace while refusing to budge from our principles were as powerful in life as it is in death? In the death of Socrates, we see a man who did not make a resolution to die well once he understood that death was approaching. Instead, he decided to live and behave as he had lived and behaved until the moment of death. There is a vast difference between those two ideas. The wisdom and heroism of such a life calls out romantically to all of us, and yet calmness remains one of the most difficult traits to maintain. In situations far less dire than those faced by the heroes above, our nerves shatter. We become either weak in the knees and spiral into anxiety, or we become impassioned and flair into anger. Why is it so difficult for us to be calm and level-headed in the face of problems and challenges that even our own rational minds will tell us were trivial three days later?

Why Calmness Feels Hard (And Why it’s Worth Cultivating)

The answer is that calmness needs to be cultivated. One does not wake up filled with regret over a previous day’s outburst of anger or display of weakness to announce to himself “That’s it. I’m going to be calm from now on.” In the timeless words of Dr. Jordan Peterson, “Yeah, good luck with that buddy.” You will root around in your head seeking the switch to flip and not find it. Yet, our heroes in history had a far greater dose of it than we. Those we revere and admire in the present, our mentors and inspirations, have it to a greater extent than we. Whether we stop to put a name on it, could it be this trait above all others that draws us to them and makes their ways seem better than ours? How do we get this for ourselves?

The answer is drugs, obviously. Socrates was able to live and die well because he was taking Aprazolam, Diazepam, and Tenamin, Prozac and Valium. I clearly jest. Simple reasoning tells you otherwise. We take drugs, and the people we know take them, and they repeatedly fail to produce in us the kind of calm stoicism we admire. Socrates did not take them, and yet he did not fail to achieve this calm. It follows then that it is achievable by other means than drugs.

The answer is practice. This characteristic must be cultivated, grown from a seedling, watered, weeded. In order to do that, you need to understand the enemies to your calmness, identify and categorize them, and begin to practice resistance. You need to understand the thought processes that are friends of calmness, and practice those too. You won’t become as calm as Socrates overnight, but you will have a plan of attack. You will stumble many thousands of times on this path, but when you do, you’ll get back up and keep practicing.

“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” – Seneca

How to Cultivate Calmness: 5 Stoic Practices for Everyday Life

Below are a few things worth practicing. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it will get you started on a path of progress toward living a calm life.

• Fake It: Acting Calm to Become Calm

Until you achieve true calmness that penetrates into your inner being, it’s not a bad idea to practice faking it. Achieving some skill in maintaining an external veneer of calmness will certainly do your efforts no harm, even if you are freaking out on the inside. This may seem difficult, but professional actors learn to behave very convincingly as if they feel a certain way when they really don’t. It can be done. Become an actor. After all, we are aware that anxiety builds more quickly when we start thinking about how others are noticing our anxiety, a vicious ramping escalation. Begin to combat this with focus on the physical. Your body posture, your breathing, the fidgeting of your hands and touching of your face, these things convey anxiety to others without your permission. Reducing the perceptibility of your anxious feelings to others will go a long way in preventing this terrible spiral. Said in the inverse, the more other people perceive you as calm, the calmer you will actually be.

Relax your body. Make slow, measured gestures, or be still. Perhaps it’s a good idea to choose one body part to practice at a time, your hands being a great start. Practice complete control over your hands during stressful situations, and allow your mind to focus in that body part. Bind your consciousness to that body part. Then consider it a win if you succeed in passing through a stress- inducing situation without losing control of your hands. If you lost control of your breathing or your full body posture, don’t worry about that right now. We’re practicing hands. Keep them still. Allow them to make no uncalculated twitchy movements, making each movement a conscious decision. When you do move them, do it slowly, deliberately. Master your hands. Then move on to another body part. Keep doing this, and before too long you will be an actor, able to act calm when you don’t feel it inside. Once you are acting calm, you will in fact be calm.

• Master the Pause: A Stoic Tool for Thoughtful Responses

We have a seemingly built-in fear of silence in a conversation. A self-initiated pause can seem eternal to us, while it’s perceived as being very short to our listener. But nothing can go so far in the perception of calmness, and by proxy calmness in actuality, as a measured pause before giving answer. We are so adverse to this that we frequently interrupt, interjecting our answer before the other person has fully finished speaking. It’s such a natural inclination, and yet if we probe it, we can find no benefit or logical good in this action. The more passionate we are about the topic at hand, the more likely we are to rush our responses to the point of interruption. But, does this make your answer any wiser, any more thoughtful and valuable? Not at all. Your answer is your answer. Let them wait three or four seconds to hear it. Let them wait ten sometimes. Contrary to our built-in fear that this will bore our listener, or make them feel awkward in the silence, it will in fact make them feel heard. They will perceive that you are really listening to them, and giving consideration to their words before responding. Inversely, responding too quickly, interrupting, or blurting will make them feel consciously or subconsciously that you aren’t really listening. That you are impulsive, emotional, self-centered, and weak. Learn to love the pause and practice it well until the point of mastery. In addition to the benefits of perception, you will also gain time to think and provide a measured, thoughtful response.

• Follow the Pause: De-Escalating with Stoic Phrases

As a valuable add-on to the pause, practice breaking the silence with a phrase calculated to de-escalate negative emotions once or twice per conversation. These phrases can be pre-meditated, and having a number of them ready to go is not a mental crutch. Rather, it’s a mental tool. Make a list of good ones, write them down, and keep them ready in your arsenal of responses. The phrases should be engineered to make the other person feel heard, and their opinion valued. They should be designed to lower the animosity that naturally results from any difference of opinion, and express the appreciation of diverse views. Lastly, it should be changed up so as not become a noticeable catchphrase. The positive swing in perceived conflict will be palpable if even once during the conversation, rather than interrupting and speaking your opinion over theirs, you pause. You wait three or four seconds. You respond, “That is a great question, let me think.” Then, you calmly express your own response.

Some good phrases to practice include:

“I used to feel the same way, so I get that. My opinion changed over time though, …” Then follow up with what it was that you learned. This is a fantastic tactic because it shows empathy and value for their position, and humanizes yourself. It changes the whole dynamic of the conversation from “Let me convince you that you’re wrong” to “How did I become convinced that I was wrong?”

“That is very thought provoking. I’m going to ponder that more.”Some variant of this is great to use once in a while in a disagreement, even if you know you will not come to their conclusion. It shows that you are willing to examine your own opinions by the light of someone else’s argument. If someone gets the impression that you will not budge from your opinion no matter what argument is presented, they will subconsciously throw up the same impenetrable walls around their own. Inversely, if you give someone the impression that you are thinking through something together rather than trying to evangelize one another, they will subconsciously lower their own walls and become more open to real discussion. This breeds calm like you wouldn’t believe. 

“I have a hard time finding enjoyment/wisdom in X, so I’ve been talking to some people who enjoy/find wisdom in it and trying to understand what isn’t coming across to me.” The tactic here is to avoid making hard statements such as “I can’t stand X” and move the conversation toward the individual components of the things that make it wise or unwise. If your topic is capitalism/socialism, and you announce that “you hate capitalism/socialism” or that “capitalism/socialism is the worst system ever designed” the conversation will instantly come to a two-sided stand-still before it has had a chance to begin. Instead, allow the other person to break down some of the effects or elements of capitalism/socialism, find a few to agree with on some level, and then logically address those you disagree with. Two people who disagree on a component level (the value of greater effort producing greater reward, for example) are much less likely to escalate into an insult match and part as enemies than two people who have already announced that they are enemies at the outset of the conversation.   

These are just a few of many de-escalating tactics that facilitate calm conversation and progress of intellect. Learning to do this well is likely to go a long way in making your human relationships calm ones.

• Normalize Emotions: Stoic Acceptance of Feelings

We are human beings, made of flesh, blood, and spirit. Experiencing emotion is in our nature, both positive and negative. Do not fight this nature, you will not win. A bear cannot stop being a bear, no matter how many circus tricks it learns. Instead, fight poor reactions to these emotions, and cultivate good ones. Growing in Stoicism does not mean that you are training emotions out of your system, and learning not to experience things like sadness, anxiety, anger, elation, joy. Rather, it means that you are learning to control your reactions to these emotions and steering them toward production of the highest good. Feel the things you feel, but react in wisdom. When you succeed in this regard, it will be something like “I felt strong anger, and I reacted calmly.” When you fail, it will be “I felt strong anger, and reacted angrily.”

Part of normalizing emotions and slowly working on training your reactions is “failure.” You need to apply the principle of failing forward when inevitable setbacks come. If you reacted in anger, do not wallow in defeat and revisit that again and again in your mind. It has already passed into the realm of things you cannot control. Instead, use it as a motivation, a launchpad for future success. Get up, dust yourself off. Apologize humbly if need be. Do better next time. Give it no further weight than missing a shot in basketball. An oft-quoted Michael Jordan interview says it all: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Who remembers Michael Jordan as a failure? Nobody. We remember him as someone who practiced and practiced, and that these misses were a natural part of that practice. His practice led him to greater success than any other basketball player in history, and it is for this we remember him. We remember Socrates for his incredible control of reactions to his emotions. Does it not stand to reason that he required a lot of practice and misses to reach that point? He wasn’t born that way, I guarantee it. Go out and practice.

• Practice in Your Home: Building a Stoic Life of Calmness

Before you can go out and engineer a beautiful city, you’ll need to be able to engineer a tidy room.  Start with the small things. Start in your home, which provides you the greatest and safest opportunity to begin practicing the elements of calmness. Practice with your children, your siblings, your parents, your spouse… whomever lives with you. If your spouse, inform them that you are practicing, and practice together. Before you can go face the evils of the world with calm Stoicism, you need to be able to face the dirty dishes or the broken tv. In your humanity, are you likely to feel anger when your child tracks mud across the carpet? Yes. That experience of emotion lies in the realm outside of control. Is anyone compelling you to react angrily and hurtfully? To escalate, to cause harm in response to harm? Is this an inevitability? No. It lies entirely within your control. Grasp it. Own it. Embrace it as a gift… an opportunity to practice the skill you want to be able to employ out in the world and in the workplace. Doing so deliberately and consistently will begin to alter your mindset. You will stop thinking “something bad happened to me today” and a new system of thought will begin to develop. “I got to play today. I missed some shots, but I wasn’t sitting on the bench. I got a chance to practice and improve myself today, and I took that chance.” Love the game. Go play the game. Eventually you will become great at the game. 

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