Are We Any Different Than Epictetus??

What it is about modern life that has made so many women so unable to find happiness? 

Thomas Jefferson

As Thomas Jefferson, my intellectual idol, crafted the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, he recognized that the pursuit of happiness was a fundamental unalienable right. Consider the lives of women in Jefferson’s day – no indoor plumbing, no refrigerators, no automatic washers and dryers, no electricity, no central heating, no radio, no television, no computers, no right to vote and often very limited educational opportunities.  Would our female forebears not look at our modern times and think how happy they would be to have our conveniences, our wealth??  Well, it turns out that they would be wrong, wrong, wrong!!!  Research shows that whatever our state, we adapt to it as our “normal” and none of these extrinsic things provide us with any lasting happiness.

So if modern conveniences, money, success and the acquisition of bigger and better things don’t provide happiness, what does?  Well, it turns out that every bit of happiness comes from within.  Ancient Greek Stoic Philosopher, Epictetus, hit the nail on the head when he wrote:  “man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things...do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well...suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power”.

While the English word stoic is defined by a lack of emotion, or an indifference to pleasure or pain, that was not how the ancient Greeks defined it.  To philosophers like Epictetus, Stoicism was predicated on the belief that God determines everything for the best and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Its later Roman form advocated the calm acceptance of all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will or of the natural order.  Interestingly both Haidt and Lyubomirsky provide scientific evidence of the direct correlation between spiritual faith and happiness – a happy coincidence spoken of for thousands of years – probably not!