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Some moments will overwhelm us. Guaranteed.
When thou hast been compelled by circumstances to be in a manner distracted, quickly return unto thyself, and be not out of tune longer than the compulsion lasts; for thou wilt have more mastery over the harmony by continually recurring to it.
Since January of this year I’ve been pursuing angel investment for the business that’s growing up around my philosophy work.
I’ve been in countless pitch meetings, proved my models dozens of times, updated my deck, learned to do better math, and after all that, six months later, there’s still lots of interest but no investment.
It’s the same thing, over and over again, “Tanner, we just don’t understand this business model. Can’t you create a philosophy SaaS product instead? What about an app, or some kind of AI philosopher?” 🤮
And today, this morning, I just kind of lost it.
I had a call last night that I was so sure would be THE call, and it wasn’t. It was another delay, another excuse, and more work to do. More financial uncertainty to endure. More risk to accept. More struggling against the odds.
And this morning, after taking my son to nursery, and driving my wife to a physical therapy appointment, I just pulled off to the side of the road and cried for a minute. An honest and emotional expression of anger, exhaustion, fear, and hopelessness just hit me like a ton of bricks and, even after years of practice, I couldn’t get between the impressions and the assent.
How Stoic is that?
Well, actually, it perfectly Stoic. It’s not sage-like, but it’s very Stoic.
We need to get better at practicing, but not in the way you might think I mean…
If I wasn’t a seasoned Stoic, with years of orthodox study and practice under my belt, I could have really failed this morning. Failing to be a sage isn’t a failure, it’s not even a mistake, it’s a foregone conclusion — it’s an inevitability. I won’t be a sage, none of us will, and that means moments of imperfection (moments of less than perfect practice, as prokoptôns) are exactly reasonable and expected.
A failure would have been assenting to the impression that I was a poor Stoic, or that Stoicism wasn’t useful, because I’m not invulnerable to negative emotion or to being overwhelmed.
Instead, I let the less-than-perfect happen and then I got back to the work of practice. I asked questions about my impressions, about my decisions, about how I was feeling and whether or not it was useful, and whether or not it was a reflection of reality or fantasy. I was “out of tune” for about twenty minutes. Then I recovered, and got back to practicing.
I implore you to internalise this week’s edition, to take it onboard as absolute truth, and to allow it to be there for you when you have moments like I had this morning.
You are not a bad Stoic simply because your are an imperfect Stoic. An imperfect Stoic is all any Stoic can be, and there are no exceptions. Marcus, Seneca, Musonious, Epictetus, Cato, Zeno, Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Aristo, Panaetius, none of these individuals were free of fear, anger, sadness, or imperfection, and all of them were still great men.
It’s the same for you. For all of us. We’re not free of imperfection, but we are still great men and women.
Keep this in mind today. Keep it in mind forever. And keep practicing.
Stay hungry. Stay wise. Eat brekkie.
