Obligations or opportunities?

"So also in our case, we picture the work of the philosopher as being something like this, that he should adapt his own will to what comes about so that nothing happens against our will, and so that nothing fails to happen when we want it to happen."

Epictetus, Discourses, 2.14.7

I have struggled with overt pessimism most of my life. All of the things that I've done, and that have happened to me, convinced me — or, perhaps more accurately, I used such things to convince myself — of a pessimistic worldview.

When I rejected religion in my youth, this worldview saw me go through not only an angry atheist phase, but a nihilist one as well. I saw everything as an obligation. My will was opposite of Epictetus' ideal; rather, it was in disharmony with events as they happened.

Now, however, I know that life has far more opportunities (things I get to do) than obligations (things I have to do). I'm starting to come around to this way of thinking. Everything that happens offers a chance to learn something, even circumstances that appear to be — or we have judged to be — bad, evil, or otherwise unfortunate.

Take my insomnia, for example. I woke up this morning at 1 A.M., my injured back spasming in pain (don't ask what I did because I still don't know) and my face drenched in sweat from overheating. Sure, waking up that early is not fun. As I sit here writing this, it feels like I've been up for quite a while, and I still have a whole work day to get through.

Even so, I now have a lot more time to study philosophy, read the book I'm really into at the moment (Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson), and write, including this post, all before work starts at 7 A.M. I get to be awake and I get to endure, so that I may continue my education, as Epictetus put it.

We choose how we're going to view a situation; we choose, to borrow Epictetus' analogy, by which handle we will grasp any circumstance. So I continually make the choice to see the opportunties in any given event, even the worst among them. This requires a monumental amount of effort, and I certainly fail to see the forest for the trees sometimes. All of that effort, however, will be worthwhile.

This is a choice you can make for yourself, too. When something happens to you, how will you view it? Will you get angry, resentful, jealous, or afraid? Or will you see the opportunity for growth, learning, and improvement? This line of thinking helps me a lot, even when that long-standing pessimist worldview gets in the way. And even though I still lean toward a glass half empty perspective, my choices nonetheless allow me to see where I can learn and benefit (or teach and benefit others). Well, they can if I make the correct ones, which is where the challenge comes in.

Undoing decades of pessimism won't be accomplished in a matter of months (as it's been since I read the passage quoted above), but every habit starts somewhere. I was in the habit of seeing the world through a grim lens, viewing every event that involved me as an obligation. As we all know, to counter a bad habit, we simply do the opposite.

Go in peace, and may you find wisdom today.

References

Epictetus, & Hard, R. (2014). Discourses, Fragments, Handbook. Oxford University Press.