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Brittany Polat on Deeper Connections (Episode 114) image

Brittany Polat on Deeper Connections (Episode 114)

Stoa Conversations: Stoicism Applied
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734 Plays11 months ago

How can you use Stoicism to cultivate compassion and build deeper connections?

Brittany Polat joins Caleb to talk about the themes from her new set of meditations: Deeper Connections. They discuss the meaning of Stoic compassion and what becoming more compassionate looks like in theory and practice.

Deeper Connections

Journal Like A Stoic

https://stoicismforhumans.substack.com/

(01:11) Stoic Compassion

(11:11) Becoming More Compassionate

(19:43) Abundance Mindset

(25:58) Friendship

(29:15) Forgiving Others

(36:28) Forgiving Oneself

(43:12) Practice And Meditation

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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/

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Transcript

Introduction to Brittany Polet's Work

00:00:00
Speaker
having those maxims and that practice just at your fingertips, so to speak, on the tip of your tongue where you can say to yourself, no, you know, I made a commitment today. So just that continuous, you know, sticking with it, like we were just talking about, I think that is crucial. So putting all of these together into a package, you know, I don't think it's just one particular exercise.

Exploring Compassion in Stoicism

00:00:21
Speaker
I think it's all of them put together that's going to make a difference.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to Stoic Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and in this conversation, I speak with Brittany Polet. Brittany is a past Stoic Conversations guest and author of Journal Like a Stoic. She recently composed a new set of meditations entitled
00:00:44
Speaker
deeper connections. The focus of these meditations is cultivating compassion, especially in the context of relationships, relationships with ourselves, loved ones, coworkers, and more. So do check that out on the STO app. Here is our conversation. Thanks so much for joining.

Stoic Concepts of Kindness and Compassion

00:01:09
Speaker
Thanks for inviting me.
00:01:11
Speaker
Well, what does compassion mean for the Stoics? Well, this is a really interesting topic because the ancient Stoics didn't speak directly of compassion as we typically talk about it today. You know, we think about compassion maybe from a Christian or Buddhist context, but what is interesting is that they had
00:01:33
Speaker
similar ideas. I think we can reach back into the ancient Stoic literature and find similar concepts such as kindness, understanding, goodwill. They used very strong and powerful words for the good healthy emotions.
00:01:50
Speaker
the Upathei, such as welcoming and cherishing. And so I think we can apply these ideas, even though they don't correspond directly to compassion, I think they're extremely close. And they set us up to have the proper kind of mindset that I think we mean when we talk about compassion. So this very strong pro-social emotion and engagement with others.
00:02:14
Speaker
So how would the Stoics add or slightly amend some of these common notions we have about compassion, which, as you say, probably emerged from a slightly different historical lineage?
00:02:30
Speaker
When people speak about compassion, they can mean different things. Some people mean something close to empathy, such as feeling someone else's pain. Some people mean something a little bit more expansive, such as just showing care and kindness and consideration to others.
00:02:49
Speaker
So I think what the stoic account, obviously we're not talking about feeling someone else's pain because we don't do that in stoicism. Stoicism does not encourage us to feel negative emotions such as guilt or sadness, this kind of thing, but rather to place human nature and the human condition in the broader context of things.

Rational Compassion vs. Emotional Empathy

00:03:10
Speaker
so that we understand that these things are a part of life and they happen to everybody. And so we don't become overly invested in the suffering of ourselves or others, but place them in the broader context of the beauty of life and the bigger picture of nature and the cosmos.
00:03:26
Speaker
So there are different definitions of compassion, but I think stoicism can really help us to place ourselves in the bigger cosmic picture and not get tangled up in the emotions of feeling someone else's pain. So it's very helpful from this perspective to getting us outside of this very empathic way of compassion, but moving us to a rational version of compassion.
00:03:52
Speaker
Right, I suppose many people, though of course not all when they're talking about compassion these days, are thinking about a kind of empathy which involves feeling what the other person is experiencing in order to understand what they are experiencing and then ideally moving into some kind of action or care from that sense of feeling. How do you think about the stoic view and contrast with that one?
00:04:20
Speaker
Right. So instead of feeling someone else's pain, we take a rational compassion, or this is my term for it. So we have a kind of cognitive understanding that people do feel certain types of pain and that we can take action to help them without being drawn into this pain. So one common example is if you are comforting a child who's afraid of thunder, a thunderstorm, right? This is a natural
00:04:48
Speaker
fear in children, you can comfort the child without yourself feeling that same fear. And in fact, you're going to be a lot more effective at comforting her if you are not afraid yourself, right? So if you are fearful yourself, it's going to be much harder to calm her down because we can pick up, we can sense people's underlying emotions.
00:05:10
Speaker
So when we ourselves are not privy to those kinds of irrational fears, and the Stoics would classify all types of fear like that as irrational, they're not based on a proper understanding of the world.

Practical Applications of Stoic Compassion

00:05:24
Speaker
They're based on things like a fear of death, which according to Stoics, we should not be afraid of death. It's an indifferent.
00:05:31
Speaker
So when we understand the world properly, we can reframe those common negative emotions such as sadness, frustration, guilt, and fear, and we can put them in a more positive context. And when we ourselves are calm, we are going to be much more effective actors at deciding how to help people, making rational decisions, and also just connecting with others and understanding them cognitively, understanding.
00:05:59
Speaker
what they are going through. We're always going to have better capacities when we're not under this sway of negative emotions.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's such an important thought. I think many people assume that in order to offer proper care, you need to experience whatever condition or situation someone else is suffering from. But as you note, there are a number of examples where that's not the case. And perhaps the argument or assumption that many have that one needs to feel the same way to offer care
00:06:37
Speaker
is mistaken. I thought that it is, of course, important to understand to the extent that one can what the other person is experiencing, but that needn't be caused by feelings or making the exact same judgments that the other person is making about their whatever is occurring. Yes, exactly.
00:06:59
Speaker
When the Stoics think about compassion, do you think this is a reasonable first pass where of course they have a number of different pro-social concepts in play, but there's always that element of
00:07:15
Speaker
understanding to the extent that we can what others are experiencing and having this pro-social outlook, seeing ourselves as a part of a bigger picture as truly social animals at the grand scale and at the smaller scales as embedded in all of these relationships and stories. And our role is to be excellent in those relationships. And that is the stoic focus, as it were.
00:07:45
Speaker
How do you think about that gloss on stoic compassion? Exactly. Yeah. So I think this is where the rational side of our understanding comes in. You could call it social intelligence. You can call it affection and care for people, paying attention to other people. So it's not that we want to be unfeeling or ignore other people. Absolutely not. We want to be pro-social, but in a way where we understand someone else's, what they're going through, maybe their perspective.
00:08:15
Speaker
And we also want to limit our judgments to the extent possible. This is something that Epictetus talks about. So he says, don't make hasty judgments. When you go to the bath, so he's talking about the ancient Roman bathhouses where people bathed publicly and
00:08:30
Speaker
Apparently, it could be a frustrating experience. You could get splashed by someone else or kicked or your clothes could get wet or something like that. So he says, don't judge other people. Don't say that this person bathes hastily or don't say that this person does not bathe well. Just say that they're bathing fast. You don't know what judgments are leading them to do this action, right? And until you know the exact judgments that is leading someone to act this way, you cannot condemn them.
00:08:59
Speaker
It's about understanding the judgments that someone else is making. We can try to do that with the understanding that there is so much that we do not know about what's going on in other people's lives or what they're thinking or their motivations about things. To the extent that you do know what's motivating them, is it
00:09:20
Speaker
greed or is it just tiredness or whatever it is, to the extent that you can know that, you should be very careful in judging because there may be things that you also do not know about this person.

Techniques to Cultivate Compassion

00:09:32
Speaker
So we tend to make really knee-jerk snap reactions about people and the Stoics tell us, wait a minute, you do not have the complete picture here. So just hold on to that thought and don't run with that and don't let it get carried away with you.
00:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's excellent. So I suppose when you think about understanding the situation the other person is in, that you're in, whatever it may be, part of that involves realizing that there are many things you do not know. And there's this line about poker players, where the best poker players know how good they are in the sense that
00:10:11
Speaker
And I think this is true for many domains, but in the sense that they understand if you go to that table, they're like, you know, you're likely to come out with a lot of winnings because of how good the other players are, how good you are. But maybe this other table with many veterans and proper sharks is not somewhere you should sit down. And I think there's
00:10:32
Speaker
If you think abstract that away from the poker example, I like that phrase just because it's a useful reminder to have that Socratic take or understanding that you have limits, but part of that being good whenever roll, whether it's poker, being in a relationship, what have you is.
00:10:55
Speaker
acknowledging those limits and then acting accordingly. You don't need to surpass those limits, of course. All you need to do is what is realistic. Exactly. The most underrated virtue, humility. Well, what practices then do the Stoics have for becoming a more compassionate person? How do you think about that?
00:11:23
Speaker
Well, on the one hand, they have some perspective taking exercises where you're literally trying to change your perspective. One of the most well known is the view from above where you kind of get outside yourself and take a broader view and extract yourself from the immediate situation. So you can think about, okay, the background of what's going on and compare it to everything else in the world that's going on. And it kind of, it literally makes you think about things differently. Oh, maybe this person,
00:11:51
Speaker
is doing something, it's not the end of the world, maybe they have another reason I don't know about, and it helps you to think about things from the other person's point of view. Another well-known exercise is gratitude. So Marcus Aurelius talks about this. He says you should think about, you know, be grateful for the people around you and think about some of their good qualities, whether it's energy or modesty, whatever it is.
00:12:16
Speaker
identify it and spend some time appreciating it and being grateful. Even if that person is not perfect, and we're probably not around perfect people, right? We ourselves are not perfect and we don't expect the people around us to be perfect, but we can still identify wonderful things about them, wonderful attributes. And so spending some time every day thinking about
00:12:37
Speaker
those things can really change our perspective as well. And again, restraining some of those knee jerk value judgments, right? Maybe they're not doing something wrong. Maybe if you knew what was motivating them, you would not condemn them at all or think harshly about them. So just make sure that you kind of reframe, understand when you're making those judgments and try to reframe them.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah. One way I think about stoic mindfulness is in terms of you have perspective and principles. So perspective encourages you to look at particular things, look at them in a specific way. And then another way, principles involves bringing the stoic philosophy to bear. So when you do the view from above, you're shifting your perspective, of course, seeing yourself as part of a
00:13:30
Speaker
greater whole in time and space as part of a bigger story and That makes ideally I think can help make what's important more obvious and let exactly the trivial fall away exactly How do you how does that come into play in particular relationships for you and thinking about the view from above and
00:13:58
Speaker
Well, so let's take the example of a romantic partnership where it's really easy. You live with this person probably. You see them every day. It's easy to rub each other the wrong way sometimes. Oh, he didn't take out the trash. Oh, she's nagging me, things like that.
00:14:15
Speaker
And it can be so easy to get caught up in the daily grind. So by taking a new perspective, we can think about not only the positive qualities of our partner. What made you fall in love with them in the first place? What is something that they do wonderfully? Do they support you? Can you let those little things slide? You can reframe and say what's important in this relationship.
00:14:38
Speaker
And I think one thing we can also do, which we don't do often enough today, is value the relationship itself as a type of good. And this is something that the Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus talks about. He says your partnership should be an alliance, right? You can create a beautiful partnership by valuing what you can give to each other, not just valuing your partner in themselves, which of course you should do as well, but also valuing what you're creating together, thinking about
00:15:05
Speaker
your relationship itself as something that's worth pursuing. So when you take this perspective, again, it's a type of perspective shifting, but it makes it worth working for. So for example, you might think of your career as something that is worth working towards. Well, you can think of this relationship as something worth investing your time and energy and emotional energy into as well.
00:15:29
Speaker
Right, right. And I suppose that brings into the point about principles where Musonius Rofus also encourages you to think about, you know, what's the purpose of a romantic relationship? Or, you know, he has a whole list of things. What's the purpose of furnishing? What's the purpose of food? But also, of course, when it comes to
00:15:47
Speaker
these social roles. I think you can remember that purpose more clearly perhaps when you bring to mind moments of the beginning of the relationship or thinking about how the relationship fits into the arc of your lives in the case of a romantic one. And I think that
00:16:09
Speaker
Principle sort of gives you these ideas for this basis for making decisions and the perspective shift is that focus on the relationship or the ideals that you want to realize in your partnerships.
00:16:28
Speaker
And what else comes to mind for in terms of becoming a more compassionate person? So we have View From Above focusing on gratitude, these positive aspects of others.
00:16:43
Speaker
Right. Well, one other thing you can do, one other practical exercise is what William Ervin calls negative visualization. So you can imagine what your life would be like without this person, for example, or without this relationship. I call it the it's a wonderful life technique because if you think about the holiday movie, it's a wonderful life. You know, the character played by Jimmy Stewart, he is about to commit suicide and then he's saved by an angel and he gets a chance to see what things would have been like.
00:17:13
Speaker
if he had never been born. So to me, it's similar thinking about if this other person had never been born or if you had never met them, they had never come into your life in some way. What would your life be like? And almost always, if this is someone you're close to, someone you've chosen to spend your life with, your life would be impoverished without this person. So thinking about what things would be like without them makes you suddenly realize, oh, I wouldn't get to see their smile every day.
00:17:40
Speaker
Right? So I think this is a really wonderful technique that can make us more compassionate in those close relationships. And of course, you know, when we talk about compassion, a lot of times we kind of have this big cosmic idea of compassion. Like, you know, we need to feel compassion towards other people on the other side of the world. And we spend a lot of time cultivating
00:18:03
Speaker
compassion towards people that we don't know, people who are undergoing genocide or this kind of thing. And that's wonderful and necessary, but I think sometimes we actually overlook compassion towards the people that we live with or that we see every day. Or maybe a colleague who annoys us a little bit at work, or a neighbor who has political views we don't agree with,
00:18:28
Speaker
And actually, these everyday interactions are crucial as far as being virtuous and creating a better society. It's not as if you can just give money to someone on the other side of the world and be mean to your neighbors. That doesn't make you a compassionate or an emotionally generous person.

Marcus Aurelius and Positive Perspectives

00:18:46
Speaker
It actually, I think you have to start with the people who are closest to you and then expand outward from there. If you can't love the people you live with, can you truly love anyone at all?
00:18:56
Speaker
So I think when we talk about compassion, we have to remember both of those. Right. I suppose, you know, you think about compassion, you think of these models of compassion, whether it's Mother Teresa or someone who gives away all of their, an exceptional amount of their belongings for the sake of others who they've never met.
00:19:15
Speaker
But in the best case, compassionate people have those ideals, but also realize their virtues, their characters manifest in ordinary day-to-day decisions as well. I agree. No. And there's always that danger, I think, if one moves to the ideals too quickly that you're, as you say, divorced from actual people. Right.
00:19:43
Speaker
Well, something you touched on with the focus of gratitude, focusing on the positive attributes of others is that we can make this shift from a one that is more negative or critical, focusing on the vices or deficits that others have to one that is more abundant, what you call an abundance perspective. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yes, this is something that I've had to work hard on in my own life as someone who's a perfectionist and has really high standards. And I think a lot of people who are attracted to stoicism kind of feel the same way or might have some of the same issues. So, you have high standards for yourself and then you expect other people to kind of live up to the same standards that you set for yourself. And when they inevitably fall short, you just think of, oh, they didn't measure up.
00:20:40
Speaker
They did not act with courage in this situation or they did not act with wisdom. And so you're constantly kind of belittling the other person in your mind, even if you don't say anything about it, you know, it causes you to feel negatively towards them and eventually that builds up, right? So I call this a deficit perspective where you're always kind of thinking, oh, you know, they could do better.
00:21:02
Speaker
So what we want to do if you're that kind of person is shift your mindset to an abundance perspective. So instead of setting a high ideal and then thinking about how they don't measure up, you know, every day when you wake up, say, you know, this person is doing this for me. I'm waking up with this person in my life. And I'm so happy I get to talk to them over breakfast, or I get to work beside this incredibly smart person, this hardworking person, you know, so instead of constantly
00:21:32
Speaker
kind of thinking about the things that they do wrong, we just flip it and we give more, you know, salience to the things they're doing right. It's not that we ignore that they're not perfect, right? We can still acknowledge, oh yeah, they forgot to take off the trash or they missed that deadline or whatever we did. It's not that we're kind of closing our eyes or hiding our heads in the stand. And we can still acknowledge that and say, oh, you know,
00:21:58
Speaker
Could you take out the trash? I ask you to do that already. Would you mind doing it now? But not from a perspective of, you know, oh, this is the worst thing ever. We're doing it from the perspective of, oh, I'm so glad that we get to work on this together. Again, if you're thinking about relationships in terms of what kind of partnership you're building or the relationship itself, it's a lot easier to do this abundance perspective.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the best examples of that from that we have in Stoic literature is the first chapter of the Meditations from Marcus Aurelius, where he notes the virtues, what he's learned from his grandfather, grandmother, adopted father, tutors, and so on. And I think you can see
00:22:42
Speaker
how attending to these positive attributes of the fact that Marcus Aurelius attended to these people's positive attributes gave him the ability to appreciate them, learn from them, and likely enrich his relationships with them as well.
00:23:02
Speaker
I love that example. And one thing that we can learn from Marcus's book one also is we know from the historical record that these people were not perfect. And yet Marcus is able to pick out good things about many of them. You know, some of them, he just has one or two small things that they did that he's grateful for. And yet he can still pick those out. You know, there are some people that he's notably silent on, such as the Emperor Hadrian.
00:23:28
Speaker
whom he knew, he doesn't see anything good about him. But for most people, he's able to pick one or two good things. And then some people, of course, like his adoptive father, who was the Roman emperor before him, he's very, very complimentary. So you can tell Marcus recognizes which people are true role models for him and which aren't, but even those who aren't, he's still able to appreciate them and draw benefit from them. So I think that is, you're right, that's a wonderful illustration of this technique.
00:23:58
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And it's, I think you, so you have someone like Lucius Verus, who is the co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius, his adopted brother. And that's someone who is a very different person from Marcus, likely less good.
00:24:16
Speaker
Emperor. But nonetheless, Marcus is able to pick out some positive traits from Lucius Verus, and I think there is something admirable in that ability.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. Confucius says something similar. He says, you know, whenever I walk with someone, I find in them a teacher. Some of them I learn good things from and some I, you know, I learned what not to do. But from everyone, and this is a stoic, you know, maxim as well, you can learn to draw benefit.
00:24:48
Speaker
from any person, from any situation. So this is something that Epictetus talks about and Marcus Aurelius as well. Epictetus calls it the wand of Hermes. He says you can use this, you know, this is a metaphor of course, use your wand and whatever you touch turns to gold and you can find something beneficial from it. So I think it's interesting that this general Stoic principle, we can apply it to the people in our lives as well.
00:25:12
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I suppose you think about it. Classically it appears in stoicism when it comes to say managing adversity, you know, the obstacle is the way, you know, the pediment to action advances action. You have that, that thought.
00:25:28
Speaker
But perhaps even better examples are when it comes to managing our relationships with others and being able to see that, yeah, there truly is something to learn from everyone, both in the positive case, people serving as role models, maybe not entirely, but specific traits that they possess and also in certain ways as anti-models.

Seneca on Friendships and Forgiveness

00:25:56
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:25:58
Speaker
Are there any other passages or thoughts from the Stoics that illustrate this perspective for you, or are they even thinking on these lines? Well, I think we could mention briefly what the Stoics said about friendship. So we've talked a little bit about romantic relationships, but they did have a lot to say about other types of relationships as well. So Seneca talks about friends, for example, and friends are different from
00:26:25
Speaker
romance and that you may not be spending most of your time with them, but Seneca says, consider every question with a friend, but first consider the friend. After you make a friend, you should trust him, but before you make a friend, you should make a judgment. Basically, what he's saying is, think very carefully about who you admit to your friendship, but once you say, okay, this person is trustworthy, then you should really bring them into your heart and consider yourself very close to it.
00:26:54
Speaker
We are drawn to other people and we're drawn to friendships. And he also says that we should make friends not because it's instrumental, not because we're getting something out of it, but just because it's beautiful to have a friend. And that's what humans do. This kind of makes us who we are, is our naturally affectionate and social disposition. So I think it's really interesting when we're talking about relationships to think about just the beauty of having a relationship in itself.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose there's that thought you mentioned earlier of Musuenius Rufus thinking about crafting relationships for their own sake and thinking about how those are more than the people who make them up in a way.
00:27:37
Speaker
And I also love that line from Seneca where you think carefully about who your friends are going to be. And then once you've made a judgment, completely trust them.
00:27:53
Speaker
aim to be as good of a friend as you can. I think it's an interesting example of how self-trusting yourself and trusting others can often come together where you've made the judgment that this person is your friend and that's your judgment and you'll stick with it and fully trust them and devote yourself to them as a matter of trusting others and trusting your faculty to make good judgments as well.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, I really like how you mentioned judgment both for yourself and others because that's what Epictetus says as well. He says, anyone who wants to be a good friend should work to have correct judgments. And of course, that has kind of a double meaning. First of all, it means that you yourself develop good judgment, but it also means that you're able to tell what other people's judgments are. So this brings us again, back to this idea of understanding other people, both for feeling compassion and as a type of social awareness and social intelligence.
00:28:49
Speaker
So when you know why other people are making what their motivations are or why they might be doing something, then you're much better able to decide whether to admit them into your friendship and to trust them or not. So again, we're not all knowing, we're not omniscient, but to the extent that we can understand other people's motivations and judgments, we should definitely try to do that.
00:29:15
Speaker
So that brings up a natural follow-up where sometimes people do violate our trust. And I suppose that's one of the positive upsides of trusting people is you get to learn more about who you, you know, you get to improve your judgment about trust, of course. But then there's this other aspect.
00:29:33
Speaker
a related concept of forgiveness. And when people violate your trust, of course, there's a question, what should you do? But how does forgiveness play into this picture at all? How do you see that occurring?
00:29:47
Speaker
Yeah, well one of the most interesting examples that the ancient Stoics talked about was Medea. So they apparently were fascinated by the figure of Medea who was a tragic figure in ancient Greek drama who killed her own children to take revenge on her unfaithful husband. Of course, killing your own children is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. It's one of the worst things anyone could ever do.
00:30:13
Speaker
The Stoics were fascinated by Medea's thought process going into this. They looked at the dramatization of Medea's inner dialogue as she knew that what she was doing was wrong and yet she still thought it was beneficial for her to do this. She knew she would hurt herself.
00:30:33
Speaker
but her desire for revenge was so strong that she did it anyway. So what's interesting about that is they thought that she is still someone who is worthy of compassion. Epictetus explicitly says, should we put her to death? No, we should feel pity for her. So Epictetus uses this word pity, what we would say today as pity, a few times. And again, the Stoics didn't really have a concept for compassion, you know, that wasn't
00:31:02
Speaker
a word that the ancient Greeks were using. So I guess maybe pity comes pretty close to what we would today say as compassion. But he says, you know, she has become inhuman. She has made this judgment that has rendered her, you know, almost inhuman by killing her own children. We should feel sorry for her. We should not be angry with her. We should
00:31:25
Speaker
We should understand that she has harmed herself almost more than anyone else. So it's interesting that Epictetus is putting things in this way for the most heinous crime imaginable, and it's not what we would call forgiveness necessarily, but it is understanding, and I would say that it is also compassion.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose there is some amount of debate about whether forgiveness is a concept the Stoics have or should use.

Justice and Compassion in Stoicism

00:31:56
Speaker
I had an earlier episode with Jeremy Reed and he thinks we can talk recently, we can talk about stoic forgiveness, even though there's some differences with the stoic conception of forgiveness and the classical one. So if listeners want to learn more about that, they can check out that conversation or a later one I had with Michael on the same topic.
00:32:16
Speaker
But we didn't bring up the example of, in either of those conversations, Medea. It is interesting how Maja Petitas, in particular, discusses her case. And so when we say we feel compassion towards Medea here, does that amount to acknowledging that she's made a
00:32:38
Speaker
tragic mistake both for ourselves and for others and, of course, not being angry. Is that the right attitude or is there more to it? Yeah, I think so. So he uses a similar word in talking about thieves and robbers. So he says, what does that mean, thieves and robbers, that they've fallen into error with regard to what is good and bad? Should we be angry with them then or merely feel pity for them?
00:33:06
Speaker
So this is quite similar where he's saying, you know, they have injured themselves basically. So the stoic viewpoint is that, you know, you derive good from your own character. So if you do something to make your character worse, you're harming yourself. Other people are not harmed nearly as much as you're harming yourself. And they talked about this in terms of comparing humans to animals. Epictetus and Musonius Rufus frequently said, you're a beast, you're becoming like a wolf or like a dog.
00:33:34
Speaker
when you behave in this way. So they contrasted what's best and most noble about humans, our reasoning ability, our self-control, our virtue, our ability to step outside the situation and stick to our principles, as we mentioned earlier.
00:33:50
Speaker
And if you lose that, you lose your humanity. And I think just colloquially, we talk about this as well. We talk about inhuman actions. When people become evil, we talk about them as inhuman or monsters or beasts. So I think this idea does resonate pretty well, even with some of our contemporary morality, even outside of stoicism, that in order to be our best as humans, we need to
00:34:16
Speaker
you know, stick to these ideals. And once we step outside that, it's just, you know, we've lost our humanity. Yeah. And I suppose there's recognizing when that, when that loss of humanity has occurred, the response to that isn't vindictive anger. It's a kind of
00:34:36
Speaker
acknowledging that this is what happened, feeling some amount of pity and then seeking to use that to motivate whatever the right next step is or right emotional responses.
00:34:55
Speaker
I should add that this doesn't preclude us from correcting people or if someone has committed a criminal act, they need to face justice. They need to be put in jail, that kind of thing. This is not saying that we should just not do anything and let people do whatever they want. Obviously, society cannot function that way. People should be held accountable for their actions, but it means that we approach it with a different attitude. It's like we were talking about earlier where
00:35:22
Speaker
When you are not under the sway of strongly negative emotions, you're able to act rationally and do what's best from a rational standpoint. It's the same here. So we wouldn't feel anger, but we would still take actions to prevent this from happening again. We still want to organize our society in a way that limits this as much as possible. But when this does happen, we show understanding, but we take steps to deal with it justly.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Epictetus also uses a metaphor of especially vicious people are ill and should be seen as having a disease. And one wouldn't take a morally vindictive attitude towards people who have a disease out of no fault of their own.
00:36:07
Speaker
But then there's the separate question, what's the right way to manage people who are ill in this respect? It can be a complex matter, both in these larger social, political type situations, but also, of course, in personal relationships.

Self-Compassion and Personal Growth

00:36:25
Speaker
Right.
00:36:28
Speaker
Well, I suppose we have this idea of forgiving others, but there's also forgiving oneself and the role that, not just forgiveness as well, but the role that compassion plays in one's relationship to oneself. How do you think the Stoics can inform us about our relationship with ourselves when it comes to compassion?
00:36:54
Speaker
Yes, we should definitely show compassion to ourselves for our mistakes. I think this ranges from mistakes big and small. If we set an intention for ourselves one day, I'm
00:37:06
Speaker
I'm not going to get angry today with my coworker or when I'm sitting in traffic. And then we maybe slip up one time. We show ourselves compassion. It's not that we think it doesn't matter because it does matter. Epictetus makes it clear that if you give in to anger once, you're more likely to give in the next time. So we redouble our efforts, but we don't blame ourselves. We don't say, oh, I'm no good. I'm never going to get this.
00:37:33
Speaker
and think about ourselves in very strongly negative terms like that, we show ourselves compassion and say, you know, what I'm doing is very hard. This is one of the hardest things that anyone can do is to learn to overcome anger or whatever it is that you're working on, anxiety or guilt or any of those other negative emotions. So just keep it up, right? This positive self discourse is extremely important. I mean, it does take a toll on you if you are
00:38:01
Speaker
really harsh and critical towards yourself, that takes a toll on you mentally, emotionally. It discourages you from taking further action. So I think becoming aware of how we talk to ourselves is crucial. And this is where especially journaling can be very helpful. A lot of people don't even realize how negative they are towards themselves until
00:38:22
Speaker
Maybe they sit down with a pen or a pencil in their hands and they start writing all this in your discourse. And then you can see on the paper, oh my goodness, I would never talk to somebody else this way. Why am I talking to myself this way? And there are various reasons that we can do that. Sometimes we've been talked to that way in our past lives and we internalize it.
00:38:44
Speaker
Sometimes we lack confidence or various reasons can cause this, but becoming aware of our overly harsh and critical stance towards ourselves is the first step towards taking a kinder and more compassionate approach. So again, if you've messed up, you say, okay, I forgive myself for this and Seneca actually models this.
00:39:06
Speaker
And many of the listeners probably know that Seneca was far from perfect. He certainly had a few things on his conscience, I would say, and he acknowledges this. He acknowledges many times that he's not perfect, that he's just a few steps ahead of the person he's advising. But nevertheless, he forgives himself for what he's done. So I think that's a great model for us. How does he do that? What does that look like for Seneca?
00:39:34
Speaker
So where this comes up is he's talking about how he reviews his actions during the day. So again, this is another common stoic exercise where you might do some kind of meditation. It could be in the form of journaling or just a thought process at the end of the day. You review your day and say, okay, you know, how did I do today? Did I live up to my expectations for myself? Did I stick to my principles and ideals? Did I get angry? Was I kind? Did I demonstrate virtue in XYZ? Whatever you were doing.
00:40:04
Speaker
And if not, where did I go wrong and how can I do better tomorrow? And so when Seneca is going through this process, he says explicitly when he's talking to himself, he says, I forgive you, but do better tomorrow. So I think this is an excellent model for how we can talk to ourselves and acknowledgement that we messed up.
00:40:26
Speaker
steps to make it right. If you yelled at someone and you shouldn't have, then apologize. Don't just pretend it didn't happen. If you did something even more severe that you shouldn't have, take steps to make it right. It's on you. Hold yourself accountable. But once you've done that, that's all you can do. So this comes back to the dichotomy of control. What can you control? Well, if it's in the past,
00:40:50
Speaker
You can't change the past and there's no sense in beating yourself up about it. What can you do? Well, you can change right now and you can change the future. So moving forward, how are you going to prevent yourself from reacting in a similar way?
00:41:05
Speaker
So it's up to you to develop strategies, to grow in your stoic practice, to grow as a person so that this doesn't happen again. But as long as you're making a concerted effort, recognize that it is a difficult process and then forgive yourself if you do mess up.

Patience and Perseverance in Stoic Practices

00:41:21
Speaker
Sometimes in my own practice, I feel like it's kind of the old adage of two steps forward, one step backward, and then two steps forward, one step backward. It's not a smooth, even trajectory. It's not as if you wake up every day and you do everything better than you did the day before.
00:41:38
Speaker
I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't. So I think, you know, when we talk about growing in our stoic practice and particularly in our interpersonal relationships and in showing compassion to others, it doesn't happen overnight. It is a years long process. Yes, years. So, you know, be patient with yourself and remember to show yourself compassion as well as all the people around you.
00:42:02
Speaker
Right, right. That patience is necessary for making the improvement over years. I think sometimes there's a thought that if I'm ambitious enough, if I'm tough enough on myself, I can do better, get there faster. And Michael talks a lot about how he sees us and people training in Brazilian jujitsu where they show up and they think,
00:42:32
Speaker
They have all these external goals. They just showed up. They didn't think I'm going to be in this spot in six months. And often notices that those people often don't stick around as much because they either burn out or get discouraged. And it's the people who have the trait to show

Integrating Stoic Techniques for Compassion

00:42:50
Speaker
up.
00:42:50
Speaker
day after day continue to do so even when life gets in their way with getting too discouraged who in the athletic context tend to perform a lot better. And I think that's probably generally true for most of our pursuits. I agree. I love that analogy.
00:43:12
Speaker
So how can meditation then, we've mentioned some about the practice of a review, a Seneca's evening review, but are there other meditative techniques we can use that may be useful in cultivating compassion?
00:43:31
Speaker
Well, we've talked a little bit about negative visualization, so I think you could definitely add that to your repertoire, whether you're meditating in the morning or the evening, you know, journaling. Also, as much as you can get involved in the stoic community, you should do so. So just keeping these ideas fresh and at the front of your mind, I think, is essential.
00:43:52
Speaker
When you're in that moment and you're tempted to get angry or fall backwards away from your goals, having those maxims and that practice just at your fingertips, so to speak, on the tip of your tongue where you can say to yourself, no, I made a commitment today.
00:44:10
Speaker
So just that continuous, you know, sticking with it kind of like we were just talking about, I think that is crucial. So putting all of these together into a package, you know, I don't think it's just one particular exercise. I think it's all of them put together that's going to make a difference.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right where there's different exercises for shifting perspective. People are going to find different exercises more valuable than others. People are different, get different mileage out of these kinds of meditative techniques.
00:44:43
Speaker
And then there's also the thought of how do we keep these principles in mind, whether it's through reading the text, interacting with other people who take them seriously. And all of these practices and more, of course, are what stoic practice looks like over the long term.
00:45:02
Speaker
I will just mention that in the meditations that I put together, we use some breathing techniques. We involve physical activity as well. Of course, this is classic from Buddhist meditation, but involving the breath and visualizing
00:45:20
Speaker
physical sensations of warmth, of light. So putting this together with your suic practice, I think is extremely valuable. Obviously, we're embodied creatures, so our mental experience takes place in a physical context. Our brain is inside our bodies. So I think if we can train our bodies to relax in a certain way, or we can have a certain physical response where when we're triggered by an external stressor, we take a deep breath.
00:45:50
Speaker
or we visualize something. So I think people will enjoy this series of meditations because it links physical techniques to stoic mental techniques. So, you know, I find this very helpful and I think listeners well as well. Yup. Yup. Absolutely. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add? No, I think it's been a great conversation and yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you.
00:46:15
Speaker
Of course, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. You can find the Deeper Connections series of meditations in the Stoa app. Just search Stoa, S-T-O-A in the app store or play store. And if you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to rate this podcast in the Apple Podcasts app or Spotify app as well. Until next time.