Read A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy for Free Online Page A

How did he manage it? In large part, he says, by practicing Stoicism. 13
    One other thing to realize: Although they offer downtrodden people advice on how to make their existence more tolerable, the Stoics are by no means in favor of keeping these people in their state of subjugation. The Stoics would work to improve their external circumstances, but at the same time, the Stoics would suggest things they could do to alleviate their misery until those circumstances are improved.
    O NE MIGHT IMAGINE that the Stoics, because they go around contemplating worst-case scenarios, would tend toward pessimism. What we find, though, is that the regular practice of negative visualization has the effect of transforming Stoics into full-blown optimists. Allow me to explain.
    We normally characterize an optimist as someone who sees his glass as being half full rather than half empty. For a Stoic, though, this degree of optimism would only be a startingpoint. After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen. And if he is atop his Stoic game, he might go on to comment about what an astonishing thing glass vessels are: They are cheap and fairly durable, impart no taste to what we put in them, and—miracle of miracles!—allow us to see what they contain. This might sound a bit silly, but to someone who has not lost his capacity for joy, the world is a wonderful place. To such a person, glasses are amazing; to everyone else, a glass is just a glass, and it is half empty to boot.
    Hedonic adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world. Because of adaptation, we take our life and what we have for granted rather than delighting in them. Negative visualization, though, is a powerful antidote to hedonic adaptation. By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.
    One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted. To them, the world is wonderfully new and surprising. Not only that, but they aren’t yet sure how the world works: Perhaps the things they have today will mysteriously vanish tomorrow. It is hard for them to take something for granted when they can’t even count on its continued existence.
    But as children grow older, they grow jaded. By the time they are teenagers, they are likely to take almost everything and everyone around them for granted. They might grumble about having to live the life they are living, in the home theyhappen to inhabit, with the parents and siblings they happen to have. And in a frightening number of cases, these children grow up to be adults who are not only unable to take delight in the world around them but seem proud of this inability. They will, at the drop of a hat, provide you with a long list of things about themselves and their life that they dislike and wish they could change, were it possible to do so, including their spouse, their children, their house, their job, their car, their age, their bank balance, their weight, the color of their hair, and the shape of their navel. Ask them what they appreciate about the world—ask them what, if anything, they are satisfied with—and they might, after some thought, reluctantly name a thing or two.
    S OMETIMES A CATASTROPHE blasts these people out of their jadedness. Suppose, for example, a tornado destroys their home. Such events are tragic, of course, but at the same time they potentially have a silver lining: Those who survive them might come to appreciate whatever they still possess. More generally, war, disease, and natural disasters are tragic, inasmuch as they take from us the things we value, but they also have the power to transform those who experience them. Before, these individuals might have been sleepwalking through