Chapter 15: Calm Is a Practice, Not a Personality

The Notebook in the Drawer

Leila is thirty-eight and works as a translator from home. A year ago, during a period of heavy worry, she discovered Stoic ideas. She started a small notebook. Every morning she wrote three lines about the day ahead, and every evening she did a short review. She practised the pause when her mind ran ahead. She sorted her worries into two columns. For several months, she felt calmer than she had in years.

Then, in the spring, everything became difficult at once. Her father fell seriously ill, and she spent weeks travelling back and forth to the hospital. A large client cancelled a contract. Her sleep became broken. Somewhere in those weeks, without deciding to, she stopped writing in the notebook. She stopped pausing. Her old worries came back as strongly as ever, and she found herself lying awake at three in the morning, just as before.

Now, months later, her father is recovering and she has enough work again. But Leila feels a quiet sense of failure. She takes the notebook out of the drawer, looks at the empty pages after the last entry and puts it back. "I thought I had become a calmer person," she tells a friend. "But as soon as life became hard, all of it disappeared. Maybe I am just not a calm person. Maybe this philosophy is for other people."

Leila's experience is extremely common, and it is worth taking seriously, because it touches the heart of what Stoicism is. Many people believe that calm is a personality: something you either have or do not have. Some people are naturally relaxed, they think, and others are naturally anxious, and nothing much can change that. When a person who has been practising calm falls back into worry, it seems to prove that their "real" personality has returned.

The Stoics saw things differently. For them, calm was not a personality. It was a practice, like playing an instrument, speaking a language or tending a garden. Practices can be strong or weak, regular or forgotten. They can be dropped in hard times and picked up again later. Nobody becomes calm once and for all. We become calmer by returning, again and again, to the practice. In this final chapter, we will look at what that means, and at how to carry the ideas of this book forward for the rest of a life.

Nobody Has Arrived

The Stoics described an ideal person whom they called the wise person, or sage. The sage would be perfectly wise, just, brave and self-controlled, always judging rightly and never disturbed by false opinions. It is important to know that the Stoics did not believe they had become sages. Most of them believed that such a person was extremely rare, perhaps appearing only once in many centuries, if at all. Some doubted that anyone had ever fully reached that state.

So what were the Stoics, if not sages? They called themselves people who were making progress. Epictetus described such a person in the Handbook, as we saw in Chapter 7: someone who blames no one, who watches themselves carefully and who keeps their own desires and fears within sensible limits (Epictetus, Enchiridion 48). Making progress is not a finished state. It is a direction of travel. A person who is making progress still makes mistakes, still feels fear and still forgets their practice. What makes them a person in progress is that they keep turning back toward it.

Seneca, one of the greatest Stoic writers, was very open about his own failures. In his letters to Lucilius, he often admitted that he was still struggling with the faults he wrote about. He described himself not as a doctor who had healed himself, but as a patient in the same hospital, sharing the medicine that had helped him a little (Seneca, Letters 27). Marcus Aurelius wrote the same reminders to himself again and again, which tells us that he, too, often forgot them. If the greatest teachers of Stoicism were still practising and still failing, there is no reason for any of us to expect more of ourselves.

This means that Leila's months of calm were not a false appearance, and her return to worry was not proof of failure. Both were part of practice. She had built a habit, and in a time of great difficulty the habit weakened. That is what happens to habits. The notebook in the drawer is not a sign that she is "not a calm person." It is a sign that she is a person who once practised and can practise again.

There is something freeing in this. If calm is a personality, then an anxious person is stuck. If calm is a practice, then anyone can begin, at any age, from any starting point, and anyone who has stopped can begin again. The question is not "Am I a calm person?" but "Am I practising today?"

Feelings, Effort and the Time That Is Ours

Many people imagine that a successful Stoic would feel nothing. We have seen throughout this book that this is not true. Seneca described the first movements: the jolts of fear, anger or sadness that come before we can think (Seneca, On Anger 2.2–4). Even the wise person feels these. The Stoics also described good feelings that a wise person would have: a calm and deep joy, a careful watchfulness in the face of real danger and a kindly wish for good things for oneself and others. They did not want to remove feeling. They wanted to remove the false judgments that turn ordinary feelings into overwhelming storms.

So if, after reading this book, you still feel worry, fear and sadness, that is not a failure. It is being human. The practice is not to stop feeling, but to notice what you feel, to ask what judgment sits underneath it, to check that judgment and to act well. Some days, you will do this beautifully. Other days, you will not manage it at all. Both kinds of days are part of the path.

Epictetus, near the end of the Handbook, asks a question that many readers have found hard to forget. How long, he asks, will you wait before you demand the best of yourself? You have heard the teachings and agreed with them. What teacher are you still waiting for? You are no longer a child. If you keep delaying, adding one plan to another and one day to another, you will not notice that you have made no progress. From now on, decide to live as a grown person who is making progress. And whenever something difficult or pleasant or tempting comes, remember that the contest is now. The games have begun, and they cannot be postponed (Epictetus, Enchiridion 51).

These words can sound stern, but their meaning is encouraging. Practice does not happen in a special future when life is calm. It happens now, in the middle of whatever is happening. Leila does not need to wait until her life is perfectly settled to open the notebook again. Today, with whatever worries today holds, is the day the games are taking place. Marcus said the same thing in his own short way: stop talking about what a good person should be like, and be one (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.16).

Seneca's first letter to Lucilius gives one more reason to begin today. Claim yourself back, he urges his friend. Gather and keep your time, which until now has been taken from you, stolen or allowed to slip away. Nothing belongs to us except time, he says. Everything else belongs to others, but time is ours. Hold every hour in your hand, and you will depend less on tomorrow (Seneca, Letters 1). Worry, in a sense, is one of the main thieves of time. Each hour spent worrying about what is not up to us is an hour taken from the life that is. Practice is a way of taking those hours back.

Omar Begins Again

Omar is fifty and works as a supervisor at a bus depot. Five years ago, after a period of stress, he read about Stoicism and began a simple practice: a morning question, a pause before reacting to complaints and an evening review on the bus home. It helped him a great deal. Then, over the following years, as his life settled, the practice slowly faded. He did not decide to stop. He simply forgot, a day at a time, until it was gone.

This year, Omar's life became hard again. The depot was being reorganized, his teenage son was in trouble at school and Omar found himself shouting at drivers and lying awake at night. One evening, clearing out a cupboard, he found his old notebook. He opened it and read his own handwriting from five years before. "Is this up to me?" "Wait a little." "That is enough for today."

Omar's first feeling was a kind of embarrassment. He had known all of this, and he had let it go. But then he read one of his old evening entries. It described a hard day at the depot and ended with the words, "I did my part. Tomorrow I will try again." Omar realized that the notebook had always expected him to forget and begin again. That was what "tomorrow I will try again" meant.

So Omar began again, very simply. The first evening, on the bus home, he wrote only one line: "Today was hard. I shouted once. Tomorrow I will pause." The next morning, he wrote his old morning question. Within a few weeks, the practice felt familiar again, as if his mind remembered the way. It came back faster than it had taken to build the first time.

This is one of the hopeful things about practice. A habit that has faded is not completely lost. Like a path through a field that has grown over with grass, it can be walked again, and each walk makes it clearer. Omar says that the second beginning was easier than the first, because he knew from experience that the practice worked. "I did not need to believe it," he says. "I remembered it."

Dmitri and His Grandson

Dmitri is seventy-four. He has worried for much of his life, but in his sixties he began to read the Stoics, and he found that their ideas helped him a great deal. Now, his nine-year-old grandson Nikolai often stays with him after school, and Dmitri has noticed that the boy is a worrier too. Nikolai worries about tests, about friends, about the dark and about things he sees on the news.

Dmitri does not give his grandson lectures about philosophy. Instead, he shares a few ideas in simple ways, through games and stories. When Nikolai is worried about something, Dmitri sometimes takes out two cups. "Let us sort your worries," he says. "This cup is for things you can do something about. This cup is for things you cannot." They write each worry on a small piece of paper and put it in one of the cups. Then they talk about what Nikolai can do with the first cup, and Dmitri puts a lid on the second.

On walks, Dmitri plays a game he calls "camera or story". When Nikolai says something like "My friend hates me because he did not sit with me," Dmitri asks, "Is that what the camera saw, or is that a story?" Nikolai has learned to laugh and say, "The camera saw that he sat somewhere else. The rest is a story." They then think of other stories together, some of them very silly.

Dmitri has found that teaching these ideas has made his own practice stronger. When he explains the two cups to Nikolai, he is reminding himself. When he asks "camera or story?", he is asking himself too. The Stoics believed that we learn best by teaching and by living alongside others who are also learning. Seneca wrote that he was eager to share what he learned, because no good thing is pleasant to possess unless it is shared (Seneca, Letters 6).

Nikolai still worries, as children do. But he has a few simple tools that many adults never learn. And Dmitri, in his seventies, has found a new purpose for his practice: passing it on. "Maybe he will forget it all when he is a teenager," Dmitri says, smiling. "That is fine. One day he may find it again, like a coin in an old coat."

Clara and the Help She Needed

Clara is thirty-one and works as a laboratory assistant. For several years, she had sudden waves of intense fear: her heart would race, her breathing would become fast and she would feel sure that something terrible was happening. These episodes came without warning, at work, in shops and once on a bus. Between them, she worried constantly about when the next one would come.

Clara first tried to manage on her own. She read books, including books about Stoicism, and some of the ideas helped her think more clearly about her everyday worries. But the waves of fear did not stop. Eventually, a friend encouraged her to see a doctor. Clara was reluctant, because she felt that she should be able to handle it herself. But she went.

The doctor listened carefully, examined her and referred her to a qualified professional who specialized in this kind of difficulty. Over the following months, with that professional's guidance, Clara learned to understand what was happening in her body and mind during the waves, and how to respond to them. The help she received was designed for her situation, in a way that no general book could be.

Clara did not give up her Stoic practice. She found that it fitted well alongside the professional help she was receiving. Her evening review helped her notice patterns, which she could discuss in her sessions. The idea of the two lists helped her accept the parts of her recovery that were not fully up to her, such as how quickly it would happen. And the idea that seeking help is itself an action "up to me" helped her overcome her shame about needing support.

Clara's story is important because it shows the right place for a book like this. Stoic ideas can help with everyday worry, and they can support people who are also receiving professional care, which comes first when it is needed. Clara says that her biggest Stoic lesson was not any particular technique. It was realizing that asking for help was not a failure of wisdom, but an example of it.

Practical Steps: Carrying the Practice Forward

The first step is to choose your core. You do not need to carry every idea in this book. Choose the three or four that have helped you most and make them your core practice. For many people, these might be the two lists, the pause, the evening review and one other, such as the archer or the view from above. A small practice that you actually use is worth far more than a large one that you admire from a distance.

The second step is to attach your practice to things that already happen, as we discussed in Chapter 13. A morning question while the kettle boils. A pause at each red light or each hand wash. A short review on the way home or before sleep. Practices attached to existing routines are much easier to keep.

The third step is to expect to forget. Plan for it. Write a note on the first page of your notebook: "When you find this after a long gap, do not feel bad. Simply begin again today." Like Omar, you may find that your past self has left you a helpful message.

The fourth step is to share the practice. Talk about these ideas with a friend, a partner, a child or a colleague. Like Dmitri with his grandson, you may find that teaching an idea strengthens it in you. You may also find a companion who can remind you when you forget.

The fifth step is to know when to ask for more help. If your worry is strong, constant or frightening, or if it is affecting your sleep, eating, work or relationships for a long time, please talk to a doctor or another qualified professional. Use Stoic practice alongside that help. And if you are ever in danger, contact a helpline or a medical facility right away, or call your local emergency number.

What Stoicism Cannot Do

It is honest, at the end of a book like this, to say clearly what Stoic philosophy cannot do. It cannot remove all worry from a human life. Worry is part of being a creature who can imagine the future, and some worry is useful, because it prompts us to prepare. Stoicism can make worry smaller, clearer and less in charge, but it cannot make us into beings who never worry.

Some difficulties need medical or professional care. As Clara's story shows, seeking that help is a wise and courageous act, and Stoic ideas can sit alongside it, never as a reason to avoid it.

Stoicism cannot excuse injustice. The idea that some things are not up to us is sometimes misused to tell people that they should simply accept unfair treatment, poverty or harm. The Stoics would not have accepted that. Justice was one of their highest values, and they believed that each of us has a duty to act for the good of others. Accepting what we cannot change is never a reason to stop working for what we can change, together with others.

And it cannot do the practice for us. No book, however wise, can sort our worries, pause our impressions or review our days. Only we can do that, one day at a time. That is perhaps the hardest and the most hopeful thing about Stoicism. The work is ours. And because it is ours, it is always available, whatever else is happening in the world.

A Short Exercise: Your Own Handbook

The Handbook of Epictetus was made by his student Arrian, who gathered the most useful teachings into a short book that could be kept close at hand. In this final exercise, you will make your own handbook. It takes about an hour, and you may want to spread it over several days.

Take a small notebook, or a few sheets of paper that you can fold together. On the first page, write a title of your own choosing, such as "My Handbook" or "Things to Remember". Then look back through the chapters of this book, and through any notes you have written while reading. Choose between five and fifteen ideas that you want to keep.

For each idea, write one short sentence in your own words. Not a quotation, but your own version, the way you would say it to a friend. For example: "Sort the pile: what is mine, and what is not." "A message unanswered is only a message unanswered." "It is not here yet." "Measure the worst: is it great, or is it long?" "Aim well; the wind is not mine." "This person is with me now." "Look from the hill." Under each sentence, you may add one line about when to use it.

On the last page, write a note to your future self, for the day when you find this handbook after a long gap. Tell them what helped you, and remind them that forgetting is part of practice. You might end it with Omar's words, or your own version of them: "I did my part. Tomorrow I will try again."

Keep your handbook somewhere you will see it: a bag, a bedside table, a drawer at work. Read one page when you need it. Add new pages when you learn something new. Over the years, it will become a record of your own practice, more useful to you than any book written by someone else, including this one.

Leila made her handbook on a quiet Sunday afternoon. She took her old notebook out of the drawer and copied into it the lines that had helped her most. On the last page, she wrote: "You stopped once. That was all right. You started again. That was the practice." Then she wrote the date, and the first line of a new morning entry.

Chapter Summary

Calm is not a personality that some people have and others lack. It is a practice that anyone can begin and anyone can return to. The Stoics did not believe they had become perfectly wise. They saw themselves as people making progress, who still felt fear and still forgot their practice, but kept turning back toward it (Enchiridion 48). Stoicism does not ask us to stop feeling; it works on the judgments that turn feelings into storms. Epictetus reminded his students that the contest is now and cannot be postponed (Enchiridion 51), Marcus told himself to stop talking about goodness and simply live it (Meditations 10.16), and Seneca urged his friend to claim back his time, which is the only thing truly ours (Letters 1).

Leila with her notebook in the drawer, Omar beginning again, Dmitri teaching his grandson and Clara combining professional help with her own reflection all show that practice can fade and return, can be shared and can sit alongside other kinds of help. Stoicism cannot remove all worry, excuse injustice or do the work for us. But it offers a set of simple, tested tools that are always available.

Throughout this book, we have walked with many people through many kinds of worry: about the future, about health, about money, about other people's opinions, about difficult people, about the people we love, about results, about change. In each case, the same old questions helped. What is up to me? What is the story, and what are the facts? Is it here yet? What would I do if it came? What is my part, and what is the wind's? These questions are now yours. Carry them gently, use them often and begin again whenever you need to.