Switches and Stoicism

Seeing lavender fields this summer in Furano, Hokkaido. A romantic fantasy from childhood came true.

If you were asked to switch the light on in a dark room that you had never been before, you would think that the task was difficult. What is difficult is not the act of switching, but finding the switch itself.

Stoicism tells us that we can decide how we react to things. While many things external to our mind is incontrollable, our reactions and feelings are still under our control. A problem many people have in believing in this line of thinking or putting Stoicism in actions, is that they interpret it as with enough practices and mindfulness, they will eventually be able to just switch their reactions and feelings on and off like a finger snap. But time after time, the practice of such awareness did not seem to have taken them far enough. To put it another way, their average state of happiness did not go up as much even after adopting the teachings of Stoicism in their lives for reasonable amount of time. I was (and still am, god bless us human beings who will never be enlightened,) one of them. I eventually came to realized that Stoicism is not wrong or trying to make difficult things sound easier than they actually are. It just does not teach you how to find the switch! Once you found the switch, turning it on and off, indeed is not that hard.

As cliche and boring as it may sound, finding the switch requires a lot of self-introspection. Each individual has their way of getting into the state of "soul-searching," but I find it never to be just sitting down and telling yourself "let me look into myself." It invariably requires you to be engaged in some kind of activity. For me, it is yoga. I would not say that I found the switch during my practice today, but I saw a silhouette. 

I am feeling a little sad in the last couple of days. Relationship problems. You know, the usual stuff. Therefore, today, I wanted to do something that will bring me joy and lift my mood even for just a little bit. There was no wave today, so surfing is out of the equation, which is why the search of things that make me happy was provoked. Watching a movie was the first thing that came to mind. Then for the first time, I realized that movies or any form of entertainment sometimes are simply temporary distractions from our sadness. There are so many things that we do because we thought we would gain happiness, but in fact, that is not always the case. More often than we realized, they are just distractions at their best. My point is not that distraction is bad. I mean, if you are very depressed, finding happiness is not easy. Then distractions are as useful as pain-killers when you are in pain. It is just that I happened to refuse to settle for distractions this time. I continued to ask myself, so what really makes me happy? I went through a list of things that contains items that you can probably relate to: lunch at a nice cafe, buying my favourite pastries and eat at the beach, window-shopping, having a walk along the coast, going to an art museum even though I know nothing about arts, etc. These are the things that I enjoy doing normally, and I get so much joy out of. However, now I am sad and as I am imaging how these activities will go, I do not see myself getting anything out of it. So what is the difference? Why do the things that usually can make myself happier when I am normal suddenly do not do it when I actually need them to work the most? As a reader, you probably think that the reason is obvious. Everything is sad when you are sad, no matter what you do. And that is exactly right. At that moment, this truth, this knowledge, was felt. Knowing something is true is yet a bit different than experiencing the truthfulness of a truth. It is the the difference between knowing that it is going to be a dead end in front of you and seeing yourself in a dead end. NOW, you really have to get yourself together because you are really stuck. And nobody is responsible for your stuck-ness, not even yourself. But you are the only person who can help yourself get out of this by climbing over the fence. Gradually, my heart opened. I could see my relationship problems not a big deal. Thus, I started to shift my focus away from these happiness blockers. At the end of my yoga practice, there was peace.

What I am trying to say is that do not be discouraged when you failed to "choose your reactions" as freely as Stoicism prescribes. Be patient, not only at mastering the technique of switching on and off the switch, but also at finding the switch itself. Because the room you are in maybe quite dark.