How to Live a Good Life?

Lessons from Stoic Teachings for building an unshakeable character

The modern western education system is good at imparting the knowledge about the material things and their properties; however, it fails miserably to build character and personality of an individual that functions well within a society. With the advancement in the technology, the process of societal decay has fastened. The basic knowledge of character building that was ubiquitous and practiced seamlessly in the ancient past is rare and valuable commodity. One way of passing down these principles, traits, values, and practices to the newer generations was using cultural norms. With the passage of time, these cultural norms have lost their significance and have slowly disappeared. This has left a large vacuum in personality development and character building of younger generation. No wonder, how every individual and society is looking for answer to basic question(s): How to live a life? Or What is a good life?

Often a naïve answer to these questions is not only damaging to the society but also to the individual itself in the long run. Stoics had it figured out even in the ancient times when they didn’t have access to all the material goods and technological advancements that we have at our disposal. This is because the fundamental problems of life are still the same. We can delude ourselves by false realities that we have created for ourselves in the form of technological bubbles and online echo-chambers but at the end of the day we are not very different from our ancient ancestors. Our hardware (i.e. the physical body and mind) is ancient and our software (i.e. culture & customs) has become too detached from the hardware.

One of the ways to instill character traits in a person is by having role models in the society. It was very common to have such role models available for a growing child in the ancient Rome. For example, Marcus Aurelius starts his notes on Meditations with a gratitude to the people that has build his character. The list is exhaustive, and each occurrence is noteworthy contribution towards character building. Just the gratitude list in and of itself is a comprehensive depiction of values that ought to be present in a person of good character. Following is some of the points from that list:

• Father exemplified humility and manliness
• Mother demonstrated service to others & simple living.
• Grand-father instilled value for education.
• First tutor taught not to pick favorites and value hard work.
• Diogenetus taught not to busy oneself in trifles.
• Rusticus showed that character needs to be disciplined and developed.
• Apollonius extolled the freedom of the will and an undeviating steadiness of purpose.
• Sextus exemplified the spirit of generosity.
• Grammer teacher, Alexander showed how to correct without criticizing.
• Fronto taught to recognize tyrants by their duplicity, hypocricy and envy.
• Severus imparted his love for truth, justice and the people.
• Maximus exemplified self-government, steadiness of purpose, cheerfulness in all circumstances and working without complaining.
• Nobody could feel big or small in his presence.

Although categorization of good and bad is a value judgement however, not all subjective judgements are wrong (e.g. it is good to not put hands in the fire because fire is “bad” to touch). This binary categorization of good and bad has been so fundamental in the building of character that when we became more “aware” and gotten rid of this distinction that individuals lost their way to function coherently resulting in a collapse of society.

“Pity those who don’t know the difference between good and bad — they’re out of touch with their own reason.”

Stoics start with this binary distinction of good and bad and stress that one should always discern between these states at all times. In this way, Marcus Aurelius writes a set of traits that are fundamentally good and should be practiced.

1. Reason is the human nature

The way to discern between good and bad is by using the Reason which stoics regard as the human nature. It is important for a stoic to discern between the flesh and mind and give priority to the matters of mind as opposed to the matters of flesh. Mind should be the ruler and not the slave of the desires.

“Reason is the inner light and allows to tell apart good from bad.”

Nature of a human (i.e. reason) is within the nature as a whole, therefore, You harm yourself by:

• giving up your nature to pleasure or pain
• Doing anything insincere, thoughtless, or half-hearted
• Use violence against another person

Living according to nature is practicing the philosophy; the only thing that can guide us because physical world is in constant flux and we are limited by our perception.

2. Focus on the present

“All we have of time is a moment; the universe is in constant flux; our bodies are fragile; our senses grasp so little; our souls are a mist; the future is a fog; and fame is fleeting.”

Everything in life is in constant flux like a stream of river; our bodies are decaying every moment and we have no control over the past or the future. The narrow window of perception that we have is the very moment therefore, we should make best use of it. We should live the moment to the best of our ability and concentrate all our energies on the task at hand. It is in contrast to the idea of YOLO (You Only Live Once) and stresses the importance of time and urges one to do something valuable with it.

“The person who lives shortest owns the exact same amount of life as the one who lives longest. For the present is all we have and all we can lose. When we die, we don’t “lose” the past or future — we never owned them.”

3. Good Thoughts leads to Good actions

Since reason is in driving seat and is there to guide us from good and bad then it is very important that we should take care of our mind. Mind needs cultivation and it produces what it has been exposed to, if mind is exposed to negative thoughts; anger, resentment, jealousy, or discontentment then it would result in a negative behavior as well. Therefore, it is important that we fill our mind with love, freedom, and justice so that our actions lead us where we want to go.

4. Not All vices are equal

Some vices are more dangerous than other. Although actions originating from anger are bad and should be avoided but actions originating from desires are worse. Anger causes a temporary lapse of reason while desires are insatiable.

5. Don’t Fear Death

“Your life may end at any time, so think and act accordingly”

Only one thing is certain and that is death in life. Death is not to be feared regardless of whether there is an afterlife or not. Death, life, pleasure, and pain in itself are neither good nor bad they just are so, we should live our lives without worrying or fearing about them. Our actions should not be dependent on the any emotion originating from fear of death, avoiding pain, or gaining pleasure but rather we should focus on what is right and according to reason.

“Death is not only necessary, but beneficial to nature’s ongoing work. Why fear it?”

“Death, life, pleasure, pain — these are universals. Life and pleasure come to bad people as well as good; pain and death come to the good as well as the bad. Therefore, none these things can be good or bad in itself.”

Conclusions

The guidelines provided by Marcus Aurelius are timeless and provide a solid foundation for building an unshakeable character that could endure test and trials of life. These simple to use yet effective personality traits can transform a person into a true human that is steadfast and self-reliant. The good thing about stoic philosophy is that it is applicable to every person regardless of their status or profession in society.