How a Stoic faces social isolation

Living and thriving in a time of great hardship

Image by 6212079 from Pixabay

An e-mail sent by Fate

I’ve always been interested in the Stoics. Last year, I read a book on Epictetus, a prominent Stoic figure, I watched videos about Stoicism and, most importantly, I tried to apply its principles in my life.

And it was in the end of the last year that I received an e-mail from a blog called Daily Stoic — which I highly recommend — that would prepare me for 2020. It was the end of 2019 and I felt I was leaving important parts of life unlived.

It was an e-mail about an upcoming challenge called New Year, New You, or NYNU. That would be one of the many e-mails I receive and that often go unnoticed. However, I decided to open it. I was too focused on daily concerns and I thought that a challenge could be a breath of fresh air for my mind.

I read the e-mail, found it interesting, but postponed the decision. Then I realized that perhaps the anguish I was feeling had something to do with that habit. I noticed it was a vicious cycle — I felt frustrated, then I wanted changes, but when an opportunity for change came, I postponed it, and the cycle restarted.

So I decided that this time I wouldn’t make excuses and sign up for the challenge. When I got home, I didn’t hesitate or leave my doubts and fear overcome me. On the contrary, a feeling of excitement quickly filled me.

I waited until the beginning of this year, as the challenge would begin on January 1st and would last for 3 weeks. A new challenging task every day during that time.

I had a feeling that it was the best decision I took this year — even though I decided to take the challenge last year — and I was right.

It taught me about many things, but mostly about resilience, living the moment, gratitude and ethics.

And so it was that it prepared me for an upcoming global crysis, the corona virus pandemic. I am grateful for having received the e-mail and for deciding to open and read it. Can you imagine how many missed opportunities go by us unnoticed, because our life is too cluttered with unimportant, distracting things?

At the time of this post, most of us are living in social isolation to avoid spreading the virus. Some say it’s the biggest, most important crysis the modern world has ever faced. It’s taking a huge toll on people — financially, physically, mentally.

Coincidence or not, Marcus Aurelius, possibly the most prominent Stoic philosopher, ruled in the time of the Antonine plague, which lasted 15 years! Can you imagine living a pandemic in a time when medicine practically didn’t exist, when there was no information on how the disesase spread and it was pretty much a matter of luck if one died or survived, all that for 15 years? The Stoics have much to teach us about facing the hardships of life.

Studying and applying Stoicism is helping me deal with the concerns and uncertainties of the present and the future. As I have seen many people mentally suffering due to social isolation, I decided I could contribute to help others with what I learned.

What is Stoicism?

First of all, it’s not a complex, bureaucratic philosophical theory. Stoicism is meant to be lived and applied — not theorized. The Stoics wanted people to live a good, fulfilling life. That is all. No fancy terms, no extensive debate.

It’s simple and its core concept is all about what you control and what you don’t. Simple, and perhaps obvious. However, most of the time we don’t pay much attention to that simple idea and end up frustrated and angry.

And the answer to what we control and what we don’t is also very simple: we control only ourselves. It all depends on what we do, on our reaction to what is happening. Viktor Frankl put it very simply in Man’s search for meaning:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

All the rest — politics, economy, other peoples’ behavior, nature — we don’t control.

What do we control during the pandemic then?

• How we react to the pandemic;
• How we get ready for the present and future challenges — because everything indicates this is just the beginning of the problems;
• How we spend our time at home;
• How we organize to make sure we do not contract and spread the virus;
• How we contribute and help others;
• How we tend to ourselves, to our family and friends should the worst happen.

These are the things a Stoic would be focusing upon, because they’re all under one’s control. Everything else should not make their way to one’s mind, because one simply can’t do anything about them at all. And being minds preoccupied with externalities that cannot be acted upon in a time of hardship will only contribute to feeding anguish and anger.

We don’t control:

• If people — specially politicians — are behaving in ways that spread the virus (of course we can inform and orient people, however we cannot expect them to follow what we say);
• Spread of misinformation and fake news;
• The number of infections and deaths from the virus;
• The duration of the social isolation.

I would like to focus on the last one — we don’t control the duration of social isolation.

Being distant from others is tough in many levels. Specially in hard times, we want to be close to those we love, but this would be against the recommendation of isolating yourself. The impact of the virus has many layers and, although being infected is terrible, the indirect consequences it provokes are also dire.

We suffer and see people around us sad and frustrated for having to stay at home. People talk about how it was in the past, or how anxious they are for the end of social isolation, for being able to walk on the streets again, to meet friends. That kind of thought even makes people break social isolation, as dangerous and harmful as it may be.

However, wishing for a future that we don’t even know how will be — because we do not predict or control the future — is an important cause of this suffering. We focus on “when” and “if” and we put the present aside. All the accumulated energy is spent thinking about an unknown future, while we have much spare time in our hands at this moment. Time that could be spent better preparing for whatever is to come and for living the present, such as:

• Organizing your finances, as the toll on the economy will be immense;
• Learning new skills for your profession, or for changing to another. The technology market is ever growing, so learning things like programming is a great idea;
• Spending quality time with people you live with or with distant people using apps like Discord or Skype;
• Finding a new hobby;
• Consuming content that relaxes and/or educates you. There are several interesting movies and documentaries in Netflix and Amazon. You can also purchase e-books online (a lot of ebooks are free now) and you don’t even need an e-reader like Kindle, you can read directly from your phone.
• Creating new habits that improve your physical and psychological health. There are several apps which are now available for free which teach how to exercise and how to meditate. You also have time to think about your eating habits;
• Contributing through donations to hospitals or organizations that distribute food and hygiene essentials, or even volunteering to do it;
• Applying your knowledge to projects that offer solutions to many of the pandemics problems.

You can apply your time to do any of these important actions. All these suggestions are things that are under our control. We don’t want to spend our lives in dead time, we want it to be alive time.

With all that being said, be careful too not to put pressure on yourself to be productive. At the same time that it’s a good idea to use your time wisely, there is no need to try to fit in a lot of activities in your time and feel bad if you don’t do all of them.

When we stop focusing on how things were or how they will be, we reduce the weight of the isolation, because we accept the present as it is. We accept that we cannot go out now and for an undefined amount of time.

And by understanding what we control and what we don’t, we can not only survive in the present but also thrive in it, even though we’re living in hard times. The idea is to become resilient and come out of the pandemic stronger than before.

Training the perception about what we control and what we don’t takes time, because…

Stoicism is constant, deliberate practice

Stoicism isn’t about a punctual, specific practice for a situation — it’s a way of life.

Gaining perception about what you control and what you don’t takes time and practice. It won’t be from day to night that anyone will understand and apply this idea.

Nobody will 100% of the time understand and practice it— after all, we are human and fallible — but what is truly important is trying and exercising it. The Stoics weren’t concerned about reaching a static state of perfection, because that doesn’t even exist. They were concerned about committing, because trying and applying something results in important knowledge about yourself and this is what matters. Don’t put pressure on yourself — take it easy.

So, why not give it a try? Tomorrow, instead of turning on the TV or checking your phone for the same information from last week, why don’t you instead pick up a book? And when you remember about what you’d like to do in the future, think about what you’d like to do now instead. Because the future will come, and the pandemic will eventually end. But the time we lose now is lost forever.