April

3rd
DECEIVED AND DIVIDED

“Circumstances are what deceive us—you must be discerning in them. We embrace evil before
good. We desire the opposite of what we once desired. Our prayers are at war with our prayers,
our plans with our plans.”
—SENECA, M ORAL LETTERS, 45.6

A woman says she wants to meet a nice guy and get married—yet she spends all her time around jerks. A
man says that he wishes he could find a great job, but he hasn’t actually bothered to do the looking.
Business executives try to pursue two different strategies at the same time—straddling it’s called—and
they are shocked when they succeed at neither.
All of these people, just as is often true for us too, are deceived and divided. One hand is working
against the other. As Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, “There is something of a civil war going on within
all of our lives,” a war inside each individual between the good parts of their soul and the bad.
The Stoics say that that war is usually a result of our conflicting desires, our screwed-up judgments or
biased thoughts. We don’t stop and ask: OK, what do I really want? What am I actually after here? If we
did, we’d notice the contradictory and inconsistent wishes that we have. And then we’d stop working
against ourselves.
 April 4th
DON’T LET THIS GO TO YOUR HEAD

“Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you, so keep
yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious,
affectionate, and strong for your proper work. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished
to make you. Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short—the fruit of this life is a
good character and acts for the common good.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, M EDITATIONS, 6.30

I t is difficult even to conceive of what life must have been like for Marcus Aurelius—he wasn’t born
emperor, nor did he obtain the position deliberately. It was simply thrust upon him. Nevertheless, he
was suddenly the richest man in the world, head of the most powerful army on earth, ruling over the
largest empire in history, considered a god among men.
It’s no wonder he wrote little messages like this one to remind himself not to spin off the planet.
Without them, he might have lost his sense of what was important—falling prey to the lies from all the
people who needed things from him. And here we are, whatever we happen to be doing, at risk of
spinning off ourselves.
When we experience success, we must make sure that it doesn’t change us—that we continue to
maintain our character despite the temptation not to. Reason must lead the way no matter what good
fortune comes along.
 April 5th
TRUST, BUT VERIFY

“First off, don’t let the force of the impression carry you away. Say to it, ‘hold up a bit and let me
see who you are and where you are from—let me put you to the test’ . . .”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.18.24

O ne of the wonders of your mind is the quickness with which it can comprehend and categorize things.
As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Blink, we are constantly making split-second decisions based on
years of experience and knowledge as well as using the same skill to confirm prejudices, stereotypes, and
assumptions. Clearly, the former thinking is a source of strength, whereas the latter is a great weakness.
We lose very little by taking a beat to consider our own thoughts. Is this really so bad? What do I
really know about this person? Why do I have such strong feelings here? Is anxiety really adding much
to the situation? What’s so special about __________?
By asking these questions—by putting our impressions to the test as Epictetus recommends—we’re
less likely to be carried away by them or make a move on a mistaken or biased one. We’re still free to use
our instincts, but we should always, as the Russian proverb says, “trust, but verify.”
 April 6th
PREPARE YOURSELF FOR NEGATIVITY

“When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates,
egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because
they don’t know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of
good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me . . . and that
none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate
them. For we are made for cooperation.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, M EDITATIONS, 2.1

Y ou can be certain as clockwork that at some point today you’re going to interact with someone who
seems like a jerk (as we all have been). The question is: Are you going to be ready for it?
This exercise calls to mind a joke from the eighteenth-century writer and witticist Nicolas Chamfort,
who remarked that if you “swallow a toad every morning,” you’ll be fortified against anything else
disgusting that might happen the rest of the day. Might it not be better to understand up front—right when
you wake up—that other people often behave in selfish or ignorant ways (the toad) than it is to nibble it
throughout the day?
But there is a second part to this, just as there is a second half of Marcus’s quote: “No one can
implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relative or hate him.” The point of this preparation is
not to write off everyone in advance. It’s that, maybe, because you’ve prepared for it, you’ll be able to act
with patience, forgiveness, and understanding.
 April 7th
EXPECT TO CHANGE YOUR OPINIONS

“There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings—arrogant opinion and mistrust.
Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the
torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.14.8

H ow often do we begin some project certain we know exactly how it will go? How often do we meet
people and think we know exactly who and what they are? And how often are these assumptions
proved to be completely and utterly wrong?
This is why we must fight our biases and preconceptions: because they are a liability. Ask yourself:
What haven’t I considered? Why is this thing the way it is? Am I part of the problem here or the
solution? Could I be wrong here? Be doubly careful to honor what you do not know, and then set that
against the knowledge you actually have.
Remember, if there is one core teaching at the heart of this philosophy, it’s that we’re not as smart and
as wise as we’d like to think we are. If we ever do want to become wise, it comes from the questioning
and from humility—not, as many would like to think, from certainty, mistrust, and arrogance.