Philosophy for Troubled Times

I'm writing a book tentatively entitled, The Searching Pilgrim : A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to an Allegory about a man trying to find The Way to sanctification. 

The section below occurs when Dante is taking Chris, the protagonist, through the Inferno when they encounter the stoic philosophers in Limbo. There's not much humor in this section, but it has some good ideas on how to deal with situations we can't control: 

ZENO OF CITIUM: As the father of Stoic philosophy, I believe that the path to happiness comes from adjusting to those things we confront on our walk through life. Health, wealth and pleasure, for example, are not good or bad in themselves, but it is how we react to situations that determines our happiness. If you accept my philosophy being rich or poor means nothing; it is how we react to affluence or poverty that determines our happiness. Whatever happens were should accept calmly and dispassionately.

DANTE: That would go along with what Saint Paul says: “I’ve learned to be content in all things.”

CITIUM ZENO: The thoughts of my follower Epictetus summons the essentials of our philosophy:

• It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
• We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
• First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
• No man is free who is not master of himself.
• Only the educated are free.
• If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
• Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
• Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
• Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.
• There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things that are beyond the power of our will.

DANTE: CBT—cognitive behavior therapy is based on Stoic philosophy. You know, change your thoughts about what happens and you will feel better. Thoughts come before feelings.

CHRIS: Hey, I how come I don’t get to say anything.

CITIUM ZENO: Epictetus also said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” 

DANTE: The reason for this walk into Hell is to help you find The Way. The people who are most successful in finding The Way are those who do much more listening than talking.

CHRIS: Maybe so but without me there would be no comic relief and some of this stuff causes me to stop and take a nap.

Become Perfect at Tolerating Your Imperfection

My good friend, William T. Hendricks, Jr., MD, says he helps perfectionists give up their punishing pursuits by telling them: 
You have to learn to perfect your tolerance for imperfection.

In other words, "Learn to put up with your imperfections in such a way that you become perfect at accepting your mistakes and flaws."

There are several ways perfectionists can tolerate their mistakes. 
Make a statement that demands that you be perfect. Ask yourself these questions about that statement: 

• Who specifically told you that?
• What makes you think that?
• Where did you learn that?
• When did you learn that?
• How do you know?
• Are your feelings based on facts?
• Will your thinking help protect your life and health?
• Will your thoughts help you avoid conflicts with others?
• Will your thinking help you feel the emotions you want to feel?

What Made Lincoln Great?

What made Abraham Lincoln one of the greatest, if not the greatest, President of the United States. 

His father was a ne’er-do-well; his mother died when he was nine; his childhood was marked by neglect and deprivation. This background would suggest failure, not success.

I don’t know what distinguished Lincoln from others but I can guess. 

I suppose are these are the traits that allowed Lincoln to standout amongst his peers: 

• Strong character traits such as honesty and the cardinal virtues. 
• The ability to manage disruptive emotions—anger, pessimism and cynicism. 
• The art of getting along with people from the rich to the poor, from leader to common man, from supporter to critic. 
• Productive action—belief in himself and his ability to accomplish his goals. 
• A sense of humor during stressful and pleasant times and the ability to laugh at himself. 
• A consummate desire to learn. 
• Lincoln read the Bible and Aesop’s Fables so often that they affected his manner of talking and his method of thinking.  
• He wore out a borrowed copy of the Life of Washington by Parson Weems.  
• Perhaps his richest find was Scott’s Lessons containing speeches of Cicero, Demosthenes and Shakespeare’s characters.  He would walk back and forth in the woods repeating passages.  
• He studied the book until he could recite long poems and speeches by heart. 
•  Lincoln devoured books throughout his life.  Biographies.  Humor.  History.  Law.  
• During the Civil War Lincoln spent hours reading.  
• Many times, he would read passages from Shakespeare to his cabinet, personal secretary and visiting dignitaries and friends.  

Yes, more than any other factor, the books Lincoln read molded his character and enabled him to withstand the agony of outrageous fortune. Rather than founding his self-worth on the opinions of others, Lincoln lived by an internal light implanted by enduring character traits formulated by reading.

Abraham Lincoln’s Catafalque Dream

A few days prior to his assassination, Lincoln recounted the following dream:

About ten days ago I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. 

There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the same pitiful sobbing broke the silence, but the mourners were invisible. 

I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? 

Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. 

Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of others weeping pitifully. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers. 

"The President," was his answer; "he was killed by an assassin!"

Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd.

From With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by S. B. Oates, 1977, Harper and Row, New York, pp. 425-426 Reprinted with permission.

With Malice Toward None

The people of Springfield, Illinois little realized what destiny held for Abraham Lincoln.  Most pitied him.  

He suffered a melancholic depression after the love of his life, Ann Rutledge, died. Later, married to a virago, Mary Todd, who embarrassed him with her envious, hostile outbursts, he withstood twenty-two years of her verbal abuse.  

His ill-fitting clothes often had buttons missing and always needed pressing.  Tufts of grass grew in the accumulated dust on his office bookshelves.  

Prior to being elected President, he lost eight elections—state legislature, speaker of the state legislature, elector, US Congress (twice defeated), land officer, US Senate (twice defeated), and a vice-presidential nomination. 

Beset by business insolvency twice, he spend 17 years paying off his debt. Until the day he left for Washington, he milked his cow, groomed his horse, and cut his own firewood.  Cash short, he borrowed money from friends for his Presidential inauguration trip.

Most of the people opposed Lincoln most of the time.  Even his relatives voted against him!  When he ran for President, only one cousin on his mother’s side, and none on his father’s side, cast a ballot for him.  Twenty of the twenty-three ministers in his hometown opposed him.  

Lincoln became President because the three other candidates in the election split the vote allowing Lincoln to enter office backed by two votes out of five.  Almost sixty percent of the population opposed him. 

General McClellan, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, constantly insulted the man that appointed him.  Once when Lincoln visited him, McClellan kept him waiting for half an hour.  On another occasion, informed that Lincoln had been waiting for hours to see him, McClellan crept to his bedroom and sent word that he had gone to bed. When urged to dismiss McClellan, Lincoln replied that he was willing to hold McClellan’s hat, if he would bring victory to the North.   

Almost every man in the cabinet considered himself superior to Lincoln.  Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, shocked at Lincoln’s country ways, criticized him ceaselessly.  When urged to crush Chase, Lincoln countered that revenge did no one any good.  Later, despite continued caustic attacks by Chase, Lincoln appointed him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because he felt he was the best man for the position. 

Edward M. Stanton called Lincoln “a painful imbecile” and  “the original gorilla.”  In making what proved one of his wisest appointments, Lincoln set aside his pride to appoint Stanton Secretary of War.

Lincoln had this to say about his critics: 

I do the very best I know how---the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won’t matter. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Take away message:
As long as we are doing the right thing and are doing our very best, we can be unconcerned about what others think and say about us if the comments are vile and malicious. Of course, we should welcome constructive feedback, negative or positive. Otherwise how can we grow and learn.

The Darkest Hour

At the Devil’s Hour, the three o’clock nighttime that sharpens and heightens our deepest trepidations, the time when our perturbations possess us, when our forebodings are most fearful, the time when demons, spirits, and monsters of the deep magic work their wiles, when the darkest of black curtains cover the stars and when the earth has swallowed the moon, the witches of the night weaken our will and waken our most gloomy dreads. 

In other words, when we are under stress we often wake around 3 in the morning and may have difficulty falling back asleep again. 

Some believe that at 3 AM devils are most active. They say that since Christ died at three in the afternoon then three in the morning is the polar opposite opening the door for dastardly deeds of demons. 

A paranormal website claims 3:33 AM is the time when the veil between our world and the spirit world is the thinnest, allowing the ghostly spirits to cross over easier.  

Urban legend proposes that police are most often called at 3 AM. Perhaps that is the time that drunks are drunkest. 

My fellow medical students and I were convinced that more babies were born in the early morning hours than any other time, attributing this belief to the time cortisol levels are lowest. I believe this myth has been disproven but I didn’t take the time to look it up. 

The scientific minded attribute early morning waking to a drop in melatonin; others, to a drop in serotonin. 

But nighttime can also alert our senses to black possibilities. The eerie silence created by the electrical shutdown attunes us to more subtle nighttime sounds. The cooler night air constricts wood causing popping and creaking sounds. Darkness accentuates shadows and distorts objects. 

Many years ago when our neighbors home had been burglarized alerting us to the dangers of the night Vicki and I were awakened by a loud crash coming from the kitchen area. I jumped out of bed, grabbed the 20-gauge out of the closet but when I couldn’t find the shells turned the shotgun into a baseball bat and rushed into the kitchen only to find the refrigerator ice dispenser had sorcerer-like spit cubes on the floor. 

Chagrined I returned to find Vicki had locked the bedroom door and was in bed with the covers pulled over her head. In sickness and in health…really! 

The best cure for early morning waking is a glass of milk and a dull book.