“With such serviceable hands as these do you still look for someone else to wipe your nose?”

—–Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

I follow Stoicism as a guideline on how to maintain a strong, clear and efficient mind during the situations that life can throw my way. Our minds are a hotbed of emotions and thoughts and feelings. Some suppress these emotions and feelings in order to not be overwhelmed by them. Some self medicate via prescription drugs , and/or other drugs like alcohol , cigarettes etc. Stoicism for me allows me to face these emotions, do my best to control them and do so with a clear sober mind. It is extremely difficult at times and I truly can understand why others choose to self medicate or use substances. I really do not scoff at people who do this, but I do feel bad that they are hurting their body in the process of abusing substances.

By placing myself in someone else’s shoes and really trying to understand why others do the things they do when they know it hurts them, helps me to form a level of understanding and empathy for others. I never wanted to use substances to curb my emotions, and I often felt as though I was burning alive while facing my own demons while being sober, it hurts, it really has an almost truly physical pain to be deeply depressed and stand in the middle of it with no filter.

I often searched for a filter, a release of sorts from my own mind and for me it was my own imagination, thinking of things, daydreaming, escaping reality and what not. Escaping my reality became my routine, to be somewhere else inside my own head, instead of in my reality where I did not want to be. This can work, and it can alleviate some of the pain but at some point throughout your day you must come back to reality, and if you are not equipped to be there, it will manifest itself in aloof behavior, emotional fragility, awkwardness, or some other seemingly abnormal behavior when dealing with reality and the other people in it.

During my teens philosophy filled the gap between myself and social angst. It started with Taoism, I was young and just enjoyed the almost mystical words of Lao Tzu, he was like a “Kung Fu Master” teaching me “The Way”, in my head. The quotes and writings of Lao Tzu challenged me to be a better me and to live in the present moment rather than drift off to an imaginary place.

Taoism did well for me but eventually I stepped up as an adult and really got into the, “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. I finally found my philosophical home base and I use it to this day to curb the unnecessary angst my ego and my mind can generate from seemingly out of nowhere.

When conversing with others about philosophy and how it can help, people really want to know if it REALLY works, and if it can actually change them. I always do my best to explain that philosophy is not a miracle cure for anxiety, depression, fear, etc. It is just a very well thought out and very well crafted guideline for a person to use.

Some people have truly biological problems with their minds that require them to need actual medication, philosophy cannot cure that, and some people are truly mentally ill and only medication and the advice of true medical experts can help them. For others less afflicted however, philosophy paired with their medication can help them ascend to a better plain of conscious awareness.

I get asked a lot of very good questions from everyday people like myself about philosophy and how it helps me and what not. One time when discussing philosophy and it’s use, someone asked me a very good question, they asked, “If I or someone I know is being abused , how can Stoicism help with that?”

This is a very good question and I’ll answer it here the way I did then. I basically said to them…

“The way I see it and I’m no expert or even a great stoic, I have tons of self work to do but , Stoicism is a guideline, it is a collection of thoughts and wisdom to be practiced and utilized to help shape your own self into a virtuous and a solid minded being. A stoic should still respond to extreme danger or extreme situations like abuse with the utmost care and seriousness even if the philosophy itself has no clear answer for the specific extreme situation.

If someone is abusing you, you need to find help from somewhere, if you are not confident or comfortable enough to stand up to it yourself. There is no shame in feeling like you can’t challenge an abuser alone, but you must muster up the courage to challenge them somehow via help of family , friends, professionals and/or authorities for your own sake. Yes, someone may come along to help, but as Epictetus says, “With such serviceable hands as these, do you still look for someone else to wipe your nose?”. It’s much better to try and help yourself in someway , if you can.

Children are obviously exempt from this responsibility for themselves, it’s up to us adults to step in for them but even some adults are not equipped to stand up to abuse because basically the abuser has broken them and intimidated them or has some sort of legal, or physical power over the victim. (eg. a physically /mentally disabled or elderly abused persons)

Abuse is not to be endured by any mindset, the only use a mindset like stoicism holds in a situation like outright abuse is that it can help you endure while you find a way to free yourself from it. Please seek help from an abuse hotline, police, friends family, social workers etc. if you or someone you know is being abused.”

Philosophy’s like Stoicism are great tools to combat the internal ills of one’s own mind, but no philosophy has the answers to it all. Even Stoicism can’t teach you how to react to EVERY situation and it should not be used as such either. I do not agree with some of the things Marcus Aurelius says in his meditations but that is fine, the words of philosophy are to be challenged at times and shaped to fit yourself, it is a guideline not a rule book.

Use philosophy, follow the guide, do your best to stay within the ideas, but do not try to use it as a “fix all”. There is no “fix-all”, there are only guidelines and self discipline. The best way to help ourselves is to understand what we feed our mind, while maintaining our own discipline to stay true to ourselves and our own virtue. I am no expert but that is my take on it. Thank you for reading, I really do appreciate it.

Written By: Marcos Lopez 4/10/2020