Free A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine

of Julius Caesar—if he instead had spent his days, say, in a library, reading the Stoics.
    I would like to suggest, though, that Cato and the other Stoics found a way to retain their tranquility despite their involvement with the world around them: They internalized their goals. Their goal was not to change the world, but to do their best to bring about certain changes. Even if their efforts proved to be ineffectual, they could nevertheless rest easy knowing that they had accomplished their goal: They had done what they could do.
    A practicing Stoic will keep the trichotomy of control firmly in mind as he goes about his daily affairs. He will perform a kind of triage in which he sorts the elements of his life into three categories: those over which he has complete control, those over which he has no control at all, and those over which he has some but not complete control. The things in the second category—those over which he has no control at all—he will set aside as not worth worrying about. In doingthis, he will spare himself a great deal of needless anxiety. He will instead concern himself with things over which he has complete control and things over which he has some but not complete control. And when he concerns himself with things in this last category, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals for himself and will thereby avoid a considerable amount of frustration and disappointment.

SIX
Fatalism
     
    Letting Go of the Past … and the Present
     
    O NE WAY TO PRESERVE our tranquility, the Stoics thought, is to take a fatalistic attitude toward the things that happen to us. According to Seneca, we should offer ourselves to fate, inasmuch as “it is a great consolation that it is together with the universe we are swept along.” 1 According to Epictetus, we should keep firmly in mind that we are merely actors in a play written by someone else—more precisely, the Fates. We cannot choose our role in this play, but regardless of the role we are assigned, we must play it to the best of our ability. If we are assigned by the Fates to play the role of beggar, we should play the role well; likewise if we are assigned to play the role of king. If we want our life to go well, Epictetus says, we should, rather than wanting events to conform to our desires, make our desires conform to events; we should, in other words, want events “to happen as they do happen.” 2
    Marcus also advocates taking a fatalistic attitude toward life. To do otherwise is to rebel against nature, and such rebellions are counterproductive, if what we seek is a good life. In particular, if we reject the decrees of fate, Marcus says, we are likely to experience tranquility-disrupting grief, anger, or fear.To avoid this, we must learn to adapt ourselves to the environment into which fate has placed us and do our best to love the people with whom fate has surrounded us. We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens to us is for the best. Indeed, according to Marcus, a good man will welcome “every experience the looms of fate may weave for him.” 3
    Like most ancient Romans, the Stoics took it for granted that they had a fate. More precisely, they believed in the existence of three goddesses known as the Fates. Each of these goddesses had a job: Clotho wove life, Lachesis measured it, and Atropos cut it. Try as they might, people could not escape the destiny chosen for them by the Fates. 4
    For ancient Romans, then, life was like a horse race that is fixed: The Fates already knew who would win and who would lose life’s contests. A jockey would probably refuse to take part in a race he knew to be fixed; why bother racing when somebody somewhere already knows who will win? One might likewise expect the ancient Romans to refuse to participate in life’s contests; why bother, when the future has already been determined? What is interesting is that despite their determinism,