I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Ryan Holiday’s book ‘The Obstacle is the Way’. This is one of his earlier books I think and serves as an introduction to Stoic philosophy. I have come across the ideas the book contained before, through other reading such as William B. Irvine’s excellent book ‘A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy’ and various podcasts including interviews with Holiday himself, but it was good to have another pass through the principles underlying Stoicism. The specific focus of the book is the idea that obstacles should be viewed as opportunities to develop, grow and find alternative solutions rather than as insurmountable blocks to progress. Overall, I felt that the book went on a bit and that the third section on ‘Will’ has weaker than the preceding ones on ‘Perception’ and ‘Action’, but overall it was an interesting listen and it held my attention through to the end.
It certainly seems that I am increasingly settling into a Stoic philosophy towards life. Key elements to this are always remembering that there are alternative viewpoints to any situation and that the way that we perceive things occurring around us or to happening to us is to some extent a matter of choice. I think that I am now much more aware of this and much better at catching myself before I react and asking whether there are other ways of perceiving a situation that might illicit different reactions. I am definitely trying to be less attached to thinking and more driven towards action. Perhaps most importantly, I am fully embracing the idea that you should only concern yourself with things over which you have an element of control.
I think that I am probably quite close to the point where I would regard myself as a Stoic (in fact I said as much in a talk I gave yesterday). Coupled to this, I suspect that fairly soon I will start to annoy people around me (or maybe just my family) by trotting out a phrase which seems to have become my new mantra, “there’s ALWAYS a silver lining”, when something doesn’t seem to be going so favourably.
From now on I am going to try to dip into two of the major bases of early Stoic writing – Marcus Aurelius’s ‘Meditations’ and Seneca’s ‘Letters From A Stoic’. I think it is also time for me to revisit William Irvine’s book on the subject.
Tim O'Hare 