Turning obstacles into advantages

"In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us — like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.

The impediment to action advances action.

What stands in the way becomes the way."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. 5.20

Ryan Holiday's popular saying (and book title), "the obstacle is the way," is one I often struggle to understand and reconcile with my life. This is definitely a Stoic concept that eludes me, at least in theory.

Don't get me wrong, I know what Marcus Aurelius meant when he said, "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." When the mind encounters an obstacle, it adapts. Children perfectly exemplify this; it's in adulthood that we choose to become set in our ways. Our brains are elastic and malleable unless we purposefully disable them.

So what does the Aurelius/Holiday sentiment mean for me? I can think of one obstacle in my life that I have, rather unwittingly, turned into an advantage: my illness. I deal with a severe psychiatric disorder and require medication to live a "normal" life. Without this medication, I cannot function and would require institutionalization.

This illness worsens over time, even with treatment. I could allow the fact that I might go mad as I age to bother me. It is rather distressing knowing that all the effort I put into sharpening and educating my mind could be for naught; I could lose it all.

And yet, what is the point in this line of thinking? Why borrow tomorrow's trouble? As they say, I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Seneca put it even better, "As to things present, the decision is easy. Suppose that your person enjoys freedom and health, and that you do not suffer from any external injury. As to what may happen to it in the future, we shall see later on. Today, there is nothing wrong with it." (Moral Letters, 13.7).

So what have I chosen instead? I look at it this way. While I could lament and bemoan the hand I've been dealt — a crippling illness treated by medications that are hardly better than the disease they address — I rather choose to see my fate as a means by which I can enjoy life right now in the present. I should love the sane time I have with my wife, my friends, philosophy, and a hale body. And I do!

Without doing so consciously — at least from the outset — I have turned an obstacle into an advantage/perspective that most people don't have. Of course, the Stoic concept of Amor Fati (the love of one's fate) helped me a lot with this mindset.

This is what Marcus Aurelius and Ryan Holiday mean, I think. I have to ask myself, "How can I turn this awful thing to my benefit? What lesson can this event teach me?" I define the concept of "the obstacle is the way" as this: it's about becoming an active participant in my life instead of living as a victim of Fortune.

Turning obstacles into opportunities is a key element of Epictetus' notions of anechou and apechou, which are often translated as "bear and forebear," "endure and renounce," or, perhaps more famously, "persist and resist." This is the Stoic way. This is the path I want to follow.

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. It's funny how simple this line of thinking is; like I said, children do it quite naturally. Shaking loose the sediment that had hampered my mind's adaptability didn't take too much effort, though I'm only just beginning. Will it get harder as I get further and further into ingrained habits? Absolutely. But as Epictetus noted about bad habits, the best solution is to do the opposite.

I hope that you, too, can adopt this Stoic mindset as you view the obstacles in your life. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Go in peace.