Latest / The Morning Stoic: The Untold Lives Behind Stoicism / Ep. 18: You Are an Appearance

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Ep. 18: You Are an Appearance · The Morning Stoic: The Untold Lives Behind Stoicism

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  Picture a sound in the dark.
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  A knock, or a shout in the street, or footsteps on the stairs that stop outside your
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  door.
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  Before you have thought anything at all, your body has already decided what it
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  means.
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  Your stomach drops.
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  Your breath goes shallow.
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  Something terrible has arrived.
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  Nothing in that moment feels like a choice.
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  It feels like a fact.
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  And yet there's a man from the ancient world who spent his life insisting that the
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  fact isn't quite what it seems, and that there's a small gap between the knock and
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  the dread, a gap you can learn to stand in.
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  Good morning.
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  Today's story is about that gap.
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  The man is Epictetus.
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  He was born a slave in Phrygia, and he belonged to Epaphroditus,
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  a man of power in Nero's Rome.
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  That's a household where the mood of one person could decide the fate of everyone
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  else.
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  Our sources describe Epictetus as weak in body and lame from an early age.
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  We looked at the evidence for that a few episodes back, and at why the more dramatic
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  rumor deserves caution.
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  What matters this morning is the setting he learned in.
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  Think about what it meant to live inside that world.
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  The threat of punishment was not a theory.
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  An angry word from a master, a change of imperial mood, a summons you didn't expect.
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  In a place like that, fear doesn't arrive politely.
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  It arrives with its whole weight, looking exactly like the end of everything.
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  And then the man grows up, and gains his freedom, and teaches.
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  We don't have a single book he wrote himself.
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  What we have are notes taken by a student named Arrian, who set down what he heard
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  in the lecture room.
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  The short handbook that grew out of those teachings is the Encheiridion,
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  which means something like the manual, the thing you keep within reach of the hand.
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  The English we'll read today is George Long's translation, from Project Gutenberg.
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  Last time we walked through the opening of the Manual, where Epictetus sorts the
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  world into two piles.
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  Of things some are in our power, and others are not.
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  Opinion, desire, aversion, our own acts on one side.
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  Body, property, reputation, offices on the other.
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  It's a clean list.
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  But a list on its own is a bit like a map folded in a drawer.
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  The very same chapter doesn't leave us there.
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  It goes on, almost at once, to hand us something to do with the map.
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  And what it hands us is not a long argument.
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  It's a sentence you can say to yourself.
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  I imagine a student in that lecture room, perhaps one who has just heard that the
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  list is true and is wondering what on earth to do with it on an ordinary Tuesday,
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  when a letter arrives that makes his chest tighten.
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  And here is the answer, in Long's words.
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  "Straightway then practise saying to every harsh appearance: You are an appearance,
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  and in no manner what you appear to be."
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  Let that sit for a moment.
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  Notice the word straightway.
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  Not after dinner, not once you've calmed down.
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  Right away, at the door, at the first jolt.
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  Now, a word about the word appearance.
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  Behind it is the Greek idea of phantasia, which is how a thing presents itself to
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  the mind.
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  A sound, a message, a look on someone's face, and then, almost instantly,
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  the meaning your mind stamps on it.
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  This is dangerous, or this is an insult, or this is the end.
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  Epictetus doesn't say the appearance is nothing.
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  He says it's an appearance.
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  It's a claim being made to you.
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  It is not yet a verdict.
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  And what makes an appearance harsh?
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  Long, in his notes, follows the ancient commentator Simplicius here.
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  Harsh, or rough, appearances are the ones that threaten to overwhelm reason,
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  the ones that stir up turbulence and take away a person's calm.
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  These are the impressions that arrive like a hand on the collar.
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  Then comes the second half, and it's the part people often skip.
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  Epictetus doesn't just say talk back and stop there.
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  He gives a method.
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  In Long's translation: "Then examine it by the rules which you possess,
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  and by this first and chiefly, whether it relates to the things which are in our
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  power or to things which are not in our power: and if it relates to any thing which
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  is not in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you."
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  So there are two movements.
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  First, the pause, where you name the thing as an appearance.
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  Second, the question, where you ask whether it belongs to the pile you can govern or
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  the pile you can't.
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  That's where the list from last time finally goes to work.
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  I want to be careful here, because this passage is easy to hear as a trick.
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  As if Epictetus were saying, tell yourself the house isn't on fire and the heat will
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  go away.
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  That isn't what he says.
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  He doesn't claim the harsh thing is false.
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  He says it is not in the manner what it appears to be.
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  Those are different claims.
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  Here is how I read it, and this is my own interpretation, not something Epictetus
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  spells out in this line.
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  A letter arrives with bad news.
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  The appearance says, your life is ruined.
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  But look at what is actually in front of you.
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  Ink on paper.
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  A report of something that has happened or may happen.
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  The ruin is a judgment layered on top.
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  The judgment is the part that belongs to you.
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  The first jolt does not.
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  That's why the practice has two steps and not one.
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  The pause makes room.
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  The question sorts what's in the room.
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  If the thing touches only the body, the property, the standing,
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  the offices, then Epictetus says be ready to say that it does not concern you.
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  And I think we should hear that phrase honestly.
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  It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, and it doesn't mean you won't act.
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  It means it doesn't reach the part of you that decides what kind of person you are.
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  Now think again about who is saying this.
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  A man who had lived under the roof of Nero's secretary.
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  A man who knew exactly how large a threat can look when someone else holds the power
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  to carry it out.
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  If Epictetus had been a comfortable teacher telling comfortable students not to
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  worry, the line would sound thin.
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  But he spent his early life in a place where the harsh appearances were real,
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  and where some of them came true.
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  And still he taught that the first impression was not the final word.
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  That, to me, is the quiet nerve of this passage.
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  He isn't denying fear exists.
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  He's saying fear is an offer, and you may look at it before you sign.
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  It would be dishonest to pretend this is easy, or that every harsh appearance can be
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  dissolved by one neat sentence.
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  Some of them are about people we love.
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  Some of them are about real danger.
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  The ancient sources don't claim otherwise, and Epictetus calls this practice,
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  not a switch.
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  The word he uses is practise.
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  You say it again, and then again, and over time the gap between the knock and the
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  dread widens by a little.
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  There's something almost humble in the exercise.
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  It asks for no great courage in the moment.
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  It asks you to say one plain sentence to an impression that thinks it's a fact.
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  You are an appearance.
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  And then, because you've given yourself a second, to look at what it actually is.
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  So here is the life and the line together.
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  A man who knew chains and masters and imperial moods taught his students to meet the
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  sudden thing with a pause.
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  The life gives the line its weight, and the line gives the life its meaning.
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  Neither one alone would be quite as strong.
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  The text today is the opening chapter of the Encheiridion, in George Long's
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  translation, free on Project Gutenberg, number ten thousand six hundred sixty one.
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  If you read it yourself, you'll find these lines close to the end of that first
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  short chapter, almost like a doorway out of the list and into the day.
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  Next time, we'll keep walking through these ancient lives.
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  For now, whatever knocks at your door this morning, you have a sentence waiting.
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  Have a good day.