We saw in Chapter 1 the foundational Stoic claim that we react not to things but to our judgments about them. It doesn’t necessary follow, though, that those judgments are wrong. Indeed, one might react to the Stoic proposition by offering to concede it without effect: if we desire or dread something, and the desire or dread arises from our thoughts about it, maybe the thoughts are right. How are we to know?
Chapter 2 provided a general answer to that question: attachment to externals is a trap. And we have seen the start of specific answers in Chapters 3 and 4, which showed how the Stoics think we misjudge time, space, and death. But this chapter begins a series of closer inquiries into some more particular judgments we make about the world. The Stoics’ notion that “everything is opinion” becomes, for them, a warrant to examine our usual thinking more closely, department by department, to see whether it squares with reason and with what we know of human nature. To simplify only a bit, Stoicism views most of our miseries as driven by the ways we relate to desires and fears about the future, and to pleasures and pains in the present. This chapter begins by considering desire – how it works and how we might handle it more rationally.
We have noted that the Stoic teachers each have certain specialties – for Epictetus, externals; for Marcus Aurelius, perspective. On the subject of psychology, which comes to the fore in this chapter, the great Stoic specialist is Seneca the Younger. Seneca, along with others we will see, gave early recognition to many tendencies of the mind that are relearned, often the hard way, by every generation and most individuals: that we most desire what we do not or cannot have; that the pursuit of a thing is more pleasing than the possession of it; that possession of a good and familiarity with it tend to produce indifference or disgust; that we mismeasure the value of what we have, or don’t have, by comparing it to our expectations or to the holdings of others. In sum, we talk to ourselves about our desires in ways that are constantly misleading. The Stoics seek to give us more accurate things to say, as well as some advice about how to avoid or outwit our irrationalities.
1. The insatiability of desires. The Stoic’s first observation about desire is that getting what we want tends not to produce the satisfaction that we imagined. It makes us want more. New desires appear when other ones are spent; our minds seem to have an appetite for desire itself, and for the illusion that fulfilling it will bring us to an endpoint. The end never arrives.
Who was ever satisfied, after attainment, with that which loomed up large as he prayed for it?
Why wait until there is nothing left for you to crave? That time will never come. We say that there is a succession of causes from which fate is put together. There is likewise a succession of desires: one is born from the end of another.
You will learn the truth by experience: the things that people value highly and try hardest to get do them no good once they have them. Those who don’t have them imagine that, once they do, everything good will be theirs; then they do get them, and the heat of their desires is the same, their agitation is the same, their disgust with what they possess is the same, and their wish for what they don’t have is the same.
Disordered physical appetites are a frequent source of analogy to explain desires of other kinds.
At last, then, away with all these treacherous goods, better when hoped for than when attained! If there were anything of substance in them, they eventually would bring satisfaction. As it is, they are a drink that makes you more thirsty.
Don’t you know how thirst works in someone with a fever? It is nothing like the thirst of a man in good health. He drinks and is no longer thirsty. The sick man is happy only for a moment, then is nauseous; he converts the drink into bile, he vomits, his stomach hurts, and then he is thirstier still. It is just like this to crave riches and have riches, to crave power and have power, to crave a beautiful woman and sleep with her.
Pile up gold, heap up silver, build covered walks, fill your house with slaves and the town with debtors, unless you lay to rest the passions of the soul, and put a curb on your insatiable desires, and rid yourself of fear and anxiety, you are but pouring out wine for a man in a fever, and giving honey to a man who is bilious, and laying out a sumptuous banquet for people who are suffering from dysentery, and can neither retain their food nor get any benefit from it, but are made even worse by it.
This general theme of the Stoics – the illusion that fulfillment of a desire will bring us to a certain longed-for state of mind (which never quite arrives) – has been taken up by many of their cousins and descendants.
He who has more than enough and yet hungers for still more will find no remedy in gold or silver or horses and sheep and cattle, but in casting out the source of mischief and being purged. For his ailment is not poverty, but insatiability and avarice, arising from the presence in him of a false and unreflecting judgment; and unless someone removes this, like a tapeworm, from his mind, he will never cease to need superfluities – that is, to want what he does not need.
Whatever falls into our possession and knowledge fails to bring satisfaction; we go panting after things unknown and things to come, because the things that are present are never enough. It is not, in my view, that they lack what it takes to satisfy us, but rather that we hold them in an unhealthy and immoderate grip.
A new way to think about the pyramids:
I consider [a Pyramid] as a monument to the insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a Pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing thousands laboring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another. Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly.
Schopenhauer offered some interesting ways to explain the Stoic observation.
When a piece of good fortune befalls us, our claims mount higher and higher, as there is nothing to regulate them; it is in this feeling of expansion that the delight of it lies. But it lasts no longer than the process itself, and when the expansion is complete, the delight ceases; we have become accustomed to the increase in our claims, and consequently indifferent to the amount of wealth which satisfies them.
There is no absolute or definite amount of wealth which will satisfy a man. The amount is always relative, that is to say, just so much as will maintain the proportion between what he wants and what he gets; for to measure a man’s happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator. A man never feels the loss of things which it never occurs to him to ask for; he is just as happy without them; whilst another, who may have a hundred times as much, feels miserable because he has not got the one thing he wants.
2. Natural vs. unnatural appetites. The Stoics sometimes explain bottomless desires by reference to their unnatural character. We have two kinds of appetites. Some are implanted by nature, such as hunger. These are finite and can be fully satisfied. Of course they then recur; the satisfaction isn’t permanent. But the measure of them is clear. We eat until we aren’t hungry, and the same thing that was satisfying yesterday can be satisfying today. Other desires, such as the wish for status, are produced by social life, or are created by stimulating the appetite for things we don’t need. Desires of this artificial kind are never quite satisfied; their fulfillment isn’t as pleasing as we imagined, and newer and bigger objects of them must always be sought. And because they aren’t linked to a particular need, they have no natural stopping place.
Every want that springs, not from any need, but from vice, is of a like character; however much you pile up for it will serve not to end but to advance desire. He who keeps himself within natural limits will not feel poverty; he who exceeds them will be pursued by poverty even amid the greatest wealth.
The measure of what is necessary is what is useful. But what standard can limit the superfluous? It is for this reason that men sink themselves in pleasures, and then cannot do without them when once they have become accustomed to them; and it is for this reason they are most wretched – that they have reached such a pass that what was once superfluous to them has become indispensable.
Let the possessions of many wealthy men be piled up together for you! Assume fortune takes you far beyond a mere private income: it covers you in gold, dresses you in purple, brings you to that stage of luxury and riches at which you hide the ground under marble floors, so that you’re able not only to have wealth but to walk on it. Add statues and paintings and whatever art has devised in the service of luxury. What you will learn from these things is to long for more. Natural desires are finite; those born of false opinion have no place to stop. There is no terminus to what is false. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but wanderings have no limit.
Some good later reworkings:
The laws of Nature teach us what we legitimately need. The sages tell us that no one is poor according to Nature; everyone is poor according to opinion. They then distinguish skillfully between desires that come from Nature and desires arising from our disordered imaginations. The desires that have limits come from Nature. The ones that run away from us and never have an end are our own. Poverty in material things is easy to cure; poverty of the soul, impossible.
The desires of man increase with his acquisitions; every step which he advances brings something within his view, which he did not see before, and which, as soon as he sees it, he begins to want. Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with every thing that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.
This theme is pursued further in Chapter 6, Section 8.
3. Chasing vs. having. Another deception identified by the Stoics: when we work toward a goal, we imagine the happiness that its attainment will bring; but the pursuit itself turns out to be more enjoyable than the capture of the thing pursued.
The philosopher Attalus used to say: “It is more pleasant to make a friend than to have one, as it is more pleasant to the artist to paint than to have painted.” When one is busy and absorbed in one’s work, the very absorption affords great delight; but when one has withdrawn one’s hand from the completed masterpiece, the pleasure is not so keen. Now it is the fruit of his art that he enjoys; it was the art itself that he enjoyed while he was painting.
Attalus was a Stoic philosopher and one of Seneca’s early teachers. Seneca described himself as having “practically laid siege to his classroom, the first to arrive and the last to leave.” (Epistles 108.3) Seneca’s father described Attalus as the subtlest and most articulate philosopher of his times.
GRATIANO. All things that are
Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
4. Disgust with possession. A related but distinct Stoic law of desire: having a thing tends to bring about indifference or contempt towards it. Sometimes this is because finally possessing what one wanted allows its unimportance to be exposed.
You regard the objects you seek as lofty because you lie far away from them. To him who has reached them, they are small and mean. And I am very much mistaken if he does not desire to climb still higher; that which you regard as the top is merely a rung on the ladder. Now everyone suffers from ignorance of the truth; deceived by what they hear others say, they seek these ends as if they were good, and then, after having won their wish, and suffered much, they find them evil, or empty, or less important than they had expected.
Compare:
To obtain something we have desired is to find out that it is worthless; we are always living in expectation of better things, while, at the same time, we often repent and long for things that belong to the past.
But the Stoics regard the difficulty as deeper still. Anything loses its power to satisfy once it is possessed, not just because we see it more realistically but because possession itself changes how we feel about it. No acquisition or stimulation makes the same impression on us with long exposure.
Do you not realize that all things lose their force because of familiarity?
We value nothing more highly than a benefit when we are seeking it, and nothing less highly once we obtain it.
Would that those who crave wealth could compare notes with those who have it! Would that those who seek political office could confer with the ambitious who have gained the highest honors! They would then surely change their desires, seeing that these grandees are always gaping after new gains and despising what they formerly sought. For there is no one in the world who is contented with his prosperity, even if it is continuous. People complain about their plans and about getting what they planned. They always prefer what they have failed to win.
An example of the pattern on a social rather than individual level, from a visit Seneca made to the villa of Scipio Africanus:
In Scipio’s bathhouse there are tiny chinks – you cannot call them windows – cut out of the stone wall in such a way as to admit light without weakening the fortifications. Nowadays, however, people regard baths as fit for moths unless they have been so arranged that they receive the sun all day long through the widest openings. Unless you can bathe and get a tan at the same time. Unless there is a view from the tub over land and sea. So it goes; the establishments that had drawn crowds and admiration when they were first opened are avoided and accounted old-fashioned as soon as luxury has worked out some new way to outdo itself.
Montaigne was a close observer of the corrosive effect that familiarity and surfeit have on our affections.
I am bothered by a defect in my soul that I dislike both for its injustice and, even more, for the trouble it causes. I try to correct it but cannot get it out by the roots. It is that I value too lightly the things that I have, just because I have them, and overvalue things that are foreign, things that are absent, and things that don’t belong to me…. Possession breeds contempt for whatever we hold and control.
Nothing is as distasteful and clogging as abundance. What appetite would not be repelled by seeing three hundred women at its mercy, as the Grand Turk has in his seraglio? And what appetite for so-called hunting did one of his ancestors maintain for himself, who never went into the fields with fewer than seven thousand falconers?
Johnson also had remarks on this theme.
Corporal sensation is known to depend so much upon novelty, that custom takes away from many things their power of giving pleasure or pain. Thus a new dress becomes easy by wearing it, and the palate is reconciled by degrees to dishes which at first disgusted it…. Something similar, or analogous, may be observed in effects produced immediately upon the mind; nothing can strongly strike or affect us, but what is rare or sudden. The most important events, when they become familiar, are no longer considered with wonder or solicitude, and that which at first filled up our whole attention, and left no place for any other thought, is soon thrust aside into some remote repository of the mind, and lies among other lumber of the memory, overlooked and neglected.
Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust; and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to every other course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.
Johnson was probably putting a more graceful construction onto an ugly saying of Hipponax, a Greek poet from the 6th century BC: “There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the day one marries her and the day one carries out her dead body.”
Our topic in this section might be considered an aspect of what psychologists today sometimes call adaptation – the tendency to become used to things, and to stop noticing them, and all that follows from this. Stoics are keen students of adaptation and its workings, some of which help us and some of which make us worse off. Adaptation was relevant to Chapter 1, for example, because getting accustomed to a condition can cause us to regard it as natural and inevitable when it isn’t. Adaptation will be relevant again when we take up the subject of adversity, because adaptation helps with its management. Adaptation also is at the root of many desires, because it corrodes our ability to find pleasure in whatever we already have and so drives us on to new wants. Smith nicely tied the phenomenon to a larger Stoic claim.
The never-failing certainty with which all men, sooner or later, accommodate themselves to whatever becomes their permanent situation, may, perhaps, induce us to think that the Stoics were, at least, thus far very nearly in the right; that, between one permanent situation and another, there was, with regard to real happiness, no essential difference: or that, if there were any difference, it was no more than just sufficient to render some of them the objects of simple choice or preference; but not of any earnest or anxious desire: and others, of simple rejection, as being fit to be set aside or avoided; but not of any earnest or anxious aversion.
5. Envy. Attainment of our desires fails to satisfy in part because we measure our satisfaction with what we have by comparing it to what others have. It is always possible to find some who seem to be ahead of us or to have more than us, and those tend to be the only comparisons we care about.
That man will never be happy whom the sight of a happier man will torment.
No man when he views the lot of others is content with his own. This is why we grow angry even at the gods, because some person is ahead of us, forgetting how many men there are behind us, and how huge a mass of envy follows at the back of him who envies but a few. Nevertheless such is the presumptuousness of men that, although they may have received much, they count it an injury that they might have received more.
Suppose you regard wealth as a good. Poverty will distress you and, worst of all, it will be an imaginary poverty. However much you may have, still, because someone has more, you will feel that you fall short to the extent he is ahead. You consider official position a good: this man being made a consul will vex you, or that one’s being reappointed, and you will be envious whenever you see another’s name appearing frequently on the list of officeholders. Such is the madness of ambition that you will feel you have come in last if anyone is ahead of you.
Why should one person envy another? Why be awed by the rich or the powerful, especially those who are strong and quick to anger? For what will they do to us? What they can do, we don’t care about; what we care about, they cannot do.
Everyone can be envious of somebody – if not of one who is achieving more, then of one who is achieving something else.
Not only are men jealous of fellow-craftsmen and those who share the same life as themselves, but also the wealthy envy the learned, the famous the rich, advocates the sophists, and, by Heaven, free men and patricians regard with wondering admiration and envy successful comedians in the theatre and dancers and servants in the courts of kings; and by so doing they afford themselves no small vexation and disturbance.
Envy doesn’t just make us less satisfied; it makes us desire things that we otherwise wouldn’t want at all.
And how much do we acquire simply because our neighbors have acquired such things, or because most men possess them!
Envy, like other topics in this chapter, has provoked much discussion by descendants of the Stoics. Johnson was a perceptive analyst of the problem. He spun out this last idea of Seneca’s a bit.
Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.
He also observed, in his characteristic style, the universal character of the general problem: our imaginings of others.
It has been remarked, perhaps, by every writer who has left behind him observations upon life, that no man is pleased with his present state; which proves equally unsatisfactory, says Horace, whether fallen upon by chance, or chosen with deliberation; we are always disgusted with some circumstance or other of our situation, and imagine the condition of others more abundant in blessings, or less exposed to calamities.
And Johnson noted, finally, that while it may or may not make us happier to have what someone else does, we are definitely made unhappy by envy of it.
Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have their cares, either from nature or from folly: and whoever therefore finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he thinks already too sparingly bestowed.
Schopenhauer added that envy is the rare vice that makes us unhappy on the spot.
[Envy] is at once a vice and a source of misery. We should treat it as the enemy of our happiness, and stifle it like an evil thought. This is the advice given by Seneca; as he well puts it, we shall be pleased with what we have, if we avoid the self-torture of comparing our own lot with some other and happier one.
Envy can be considered an instance of a larger problem: useless comparisons, on which Smith again had a good comment.
The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented.
6. Desires and opinions. We turn from the Stoic diagnosis of desire to the remedies. The most direct antidotes, here and in most cases, are those introduced in the first two chapters of this book. One can work to view the object of a desire accurately, and thus seek detachment from it; attachments to externals are, in general, breeding grounds for envy and other vices. Or one can perceive a desire as just another misjudgment and, if the talent for doing so has been developed, simply dismiss it. To restate the point: the principle of Chapter 1 treats the mind and its opinions as responsible for what we want; it follows that any desire can be satisfied – or addressed, anyway – in two ways. One can go after the object of the desire, or one can get to work on the other half of the problem: the opinion that produces it. Solving the equation in this way (from the right-hand side rather than the left, as we might think of it) is standard Stoic procedure.
Freedom is attained not by satisfying desires but by removing them.
No one can have whatever he wants. What he can do is not want what he doesn’t have, and cheerfully enjoy what comes his way.
One man prays: “Help me go to bed with that woman.” You pray: “Help me not to lust after going to bed with her.” Another: “Help me be released from that!” You: “Help me not need to be released.” Another: “How shall I not lose my little son?” You: “How shall I not be afraid to lose him?” Turn your prayers this way, and see what happens.
Wouldn’t anyone admit how much better it is, instead of working hard to get possession of someone else’s wife, to work hard to restrain your desires; instead of being distressed about money, to train yourself to want little; instead of working to become famous, to work not to thirst for fame; instead of finding a way to hurt someone you envy, to find a way not to envy anyone; and instead of acting as a slave to false friends, as sycophants do, to suffer hardships in order to find true friends?
Epicurus offered a statement of this point of which Seneca approved.
If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.
Seneca liked it well enough that he thought the logic could be multiplied.
If you want to make Pythocles distinguished, don’t add to his distinctions, but diminish his desires. If you want Pythocles to have endless enjoyment, don’t add to his enjoyments, but diminish his desires. If you want to make Pythocles an old man, living his life to the full, don’t add to his years, but diminish his desires.
7. Useful comparisons to other people. Dealing with desires by dropping them, as just shown, is the first line of Stoic response, and perhaps all that is needed on a purist’s view. But the late Stoics knew that such a direct approach can be very difficult, so they offered other psychological strategies for the management of desire as well. The Stoics criticize comparisons that cause discontent, as we have seen. But they recommend comparisons that have the opposite effect. One might suppose that all comparisons to others ought to be held strictly irrelevant – that to reduce unhappiness by looking at others who are unhappier makes no more sense than reducing happiness by looking at others who are happier still. But this is another instance of pragmatism in the late Stoics, especially Seneca. They judge a perspective by its consequences. A comparison may be recommended just because it helps free us from tendencies of the mind that have already been diagnosed as unwanted.
Some of the healthy comparisons suggested by the Stoics are to people and circumstances from the past.
Whenever I look back at the examples of antiquity I am ashamed to seek any consolations for poverty – the extravagance of our day having reached the point that the travel expenses of exiles are more than the inheritances of princes in former times.
Comparisons to others who have been in the same boat can likewise be productive.
It will also help greatly toward tranquility of mind to observe that famous men have suffered nothing at all from evils the same as yours. Does childlessness, for example, vex you? Consider the kings of Rome, of whom not one was able to bequeath the kingdom to a son. Are you distressed by your present poverty? Well, what Bœotian rather than Epaminondas, what Roman rather than Fabricus, would you have preferred to be?
Epaminondas was a revered Greek statesman and general in the 4th century BC who was well known for his simple manner of living. Fabricus was a consul in early Rome. He, too, had a reputation for austerity.
Useful comparisons can also be drawn to those in the present who are worse off than oneself. Our tendency is always to look in the other direction – up rather than down.
No man in public life thinks of the many whom he has surpassed; he thinks rather of those by whom he is surpassed. And these men find it less pleasing to see many behind them than annoying to see anyone ahead of them. That is the trouble with every sort of ambition; it does not look back.
The Stoics recommend changing the direction in which we look for comparisons to decide how we are doing. Envy may, in effect, be reversed.
Are there many who surpass you? Consider how many more are behind than ahead of you. Do you ask me what is your greatest fault? Your bookkeeping is wrong. What you have paid out, you value highly; what you have received, low.
Plutarch made this point well, too: it is up to us to choose the people to whom we compare ourselves. This allows us to rig the contest. Whether or not this is good philosophy, it is helpful psychology.
In the Olympic games you can’t win by choosing your competitors. But in life, circumstances allow you to take pride in your superiority to many, and to be envied rather than envious of others – unless, of course, you make Briareus or Hercules your opponent…. When you are marveling at the greatness of Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, as a local once did, look also at those who are digging through Mount Athos beneath the lash, and those whose ears and noses are mutilated because the bridge was broken by the current. Consider that at the same time, they are thinking how happy your life and your fortunes are.
Xerxes I of Persia had sought to invade Greece in 480 BC. His path required his army to dig a canal near Mount Athos in Greece, and to build a 4,000-foot pontoon bridge over the Hellespont (now the Dardanelles) – the strait separating Asia from Europe. The first version of the bridge collapsed, after which Xerxes ordered terrible retributions against those he held responsible, along with a vengeful flogging of the nearby waters by his soldiers. Upon seeing Xerxes make his crossing at last, a local is said to have compared him to Zeus (as recounted in Herodotus, Histories 7.56). As for Briareus, he was a creature from Greek mythology with 50 heads and 100 arms.
An example that needs less explanation:
When that renowned Pittacus, whose fame for bravery and for wisdom and justice was great, was entertaining some guests, his wife entered in a rage and upset the table; his guests were dismayed, but Pittacus said, “Every one of us has some trouble. He that has only mine is doing very well indeed.”
Pittacus was one of the Seven Sages of Greece – the circle of statesmen and philosophers from the 6th century BC who were celebrated for their wisdom in classical times. Some more recent continuations of these ideas:
In all circumstances, we compare ourselves to what is above us and look to those who are better off. Let us measure ourselves instead by what is below. None are so miserable that they cannot find a thousand examples to provide consolation.
I mentioned the advice given us by philosophers, to console ourselves, when distressed or embarrassed, by thinking of those who are in a worse situation than ourselves. This, I observed, could not apply to all, for there must be some who have nobody worse than they are. Johnson. “Why, to be sure, Sir, there are; but they don’t know it. There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.”
It is a fact that if real calamity comes upon us, the most effective consolation – though it springs from the same source as envy – is just the thought of greater misfortunes than ours; and the next best is the society of those who are in the same luck as we – the partners of our sorrows.
A variant:
When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.
Our current teaching might be further illustrated by imagining a marketplace for miseries and asking whether we would want to make trades there. If this notion does not seem directly related to the problem of desire, consider it another device for increasing contentment with what one has.
If we were all to bring our misfortunes into a common store, so that each person should receive an equal share in the distribution, the majority would be glad to take up their own and depart.
Herodotus offered a similar idea:
This, however, I know full well – that if all men were to carry their own private troubles to market for barter with their neighbors, there would not be a single one who, when he had looked into the troubles of other men, would not be glad to carry home again what he had brought.
8. Useful comparisons to loss. Another valuable comparison considers how desirable the goods we have would seem if they were absent. We saw earlier the role that adaptation plays in creating desires that never end. Getting used to what we have causes us to lose appreciation for it. The Stoics respond by trying to see old things freshly. Instead of changing their possessions, they try to change the way they view them.
Don’t imagine having things that you don’t have. Rather, pick the best of the things that you do have and think of how much you would want them if you didn’t have them.
Don’t spoil what’s here by longing for what’s not here, but realize that these too were things to be prayed for.
We should sometimes try to look upon our possessions in the light in which they would appear if we had lost them.
Compare:
To you everything you have appears small; all my things appear great to me.
The same idea can be applied to conditions rather than to things. It is a way to build gratitude not just for what one has but for one’s circumstances and situation.
We should not overlook even common and ordinary things, but take some account of them and be grateful that we are alive and well and look upon the sun … These things when they are present will afford us greater tranquility of mind, if we but imagine them to be absent, and remind ourselves often how desirable is health to the sick, and peace to those at war, and, to an unknown stranger in so great a city, the acquisition of reputation and friends; and how painful it is to be deprived of these things when we have once had them. For it will not then be the case that we find each one of these important and valuable only when it has been lost, but worthless while securely held.