The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient

by William B. Irvine

Musonius Rufus was banished not once but twice, the second time to Gyaros, a desolate island in the Aegean Sea. He did not respond by becoming depressed or despondent, and he didn’t complain about his situation to those who visited him. In a lecture he subsequently gave, Musonius pointed out that exile does not deprive us of the things that matter most. An exiled person is not prevented from having courage, self-control, wisdom, or any other virtue.1 Furthermore, it is possible to profit from exile. It transformed Diogenes of Sinope, for example, from an ordinary person into one of the most fascinating philosophers of the fourth century BCE.2 Other people, whose bodies had been ruined by luxurious living, regained their health as the result of being banished.3

The Stoic philosophers long ago understood and appreciated the power of framing—not that they used this term to describe it. According to Epictetus, “Another person will not do you harm unless you wish it; you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed.”2 More generally, he reminds us that “what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things.”3 Seneca shared this view—“It is not how the wrong is done that matters, but how it is taken”4—as did Marcus Aurelius: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”5 The Stoics, in other words, knew that while our subconscious mind is inclined to frame events in ways that trigger negative emotions, we can substantially undermine that tendency by consciously reframing events.

Although we have limited ability to control what paintings hang in this gallery, we have extensive control over how they are framed, and it turns out that framing makes all the difference. A painting that looks hideous in one frame might look sublime in another. In art gallery terms, then, an optimist is someone who customarily places life’s paintings into frames that make them look beautiful, and a pessimist is someone who places them into ugly frames.