Simple Stoic Advice
Anticipate It
Anticipate It
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Seneca from his essay On Anger (De Ira), recent translation under the title How to Keep Your Cool (translation by James Romm):
Quote
“Everything might happen; anticipate everything. Even in good there is something rather unsavory. Human nature contains treacherous thoughts, ungrateful ones, greedy and wicked ones. When you assess the character of one person, consider that of the populace. Your greatest fear lies in the same place as your greatest joy. When everything seems serene, the dangers are still present, only sleeping. Always suppose that something offensive to you is going to arise.
Advice
Seneca more than any other Stoic whose writings survive today focused his attention on adversity that would or could soon arise. The anticipation of adversity is known in Stoicism as premeditatio malorum.
Seneca, who often found himself at the hands of Nero’s personality, was well versed in everything seeming “serene” while at the same time knowing that at any moment, things could shift and become a nightmare. Perhaps it was because of the fact that he was banished before, perhaps it was because of who Nero was, either way, Seneca preached to those he could about the need to anticipate adversity.
For example, in the same essay, Seneca also advises his brother, for whom the essay was addressed:
“You should assume that there are many things ahead you will have to suffer.”
This idea of anticipating adversity can be linked today with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy where it would be used to help a patient anticipate a fear so that the patient can become desensitized from it and thus, once encountered, could weather it.
But as the Stoic virtue of temperance goes, one must not get caught up in constantly anticipating events. Foresight can only go so far, as Seneca remarks to his friend Lucilius:
“foresight, which is the greatest good belonging to the human condition, has become an evil.”
If we get carried away with anticipation, we lose the present moment for adversities which may never come. Conversely, if we do not anticipate the adversities, they can surprise us. Find the balance between anticipating the adversity and living in the present moment.
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