You Don’t Lose People. You Return Them | Stoic Philosophy
In the Star Wars prequels, we see the romance between Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Queen of Naboo Padmé Amidala and how the overly attached Anakin suffers from an extreme fear of losing Padmé. His attachment and fear are so strong that he’s willing to betray the Jedi Order and turn to the Dark Side if that prevents him from being separated from the person he’s deeply in love with.
Unfortunately (spoiler alert), his greatest fear becomes a reality, leading to intense emotional suffering. Although extreme, Anakin’s fear of loss is a fear many people share. And, oftentimes, we go to great lengths to keep the people we love present in our lives. However, the Stoics discourage strong attachments to things not in our control, including other people. For example, according to Epictetus, someone wishing his children, wife, and friends to live forever is “stupid” as we try to control things we cannot and hope for the impossible to happen.
Still, people struggle significantly after losing their loved ones, which seems to be a natural phenomenon. Also, the mere prospect of losing someone close to us triggers anxiety in many. But the Stoics observed that the fear of loss and the torturing distress of grief are consequences of irrational thinking. This video explores Stoic philosophy in the context of attachment, loss of loved ones, and how to deal with being separated from those we care about.
Strong emotional attachment to other people seems to be a celebrated and normalized part of life. The latter is probably the case because, in many ways, our biology has wired us to bond with other human beings. But the magnitude of our attachments varies, from fondness and attraction to being sickly obsessed with someone. When we’re attached to someone, we wish that this person is present. And when this person is present, we don’t want this individual to leave us.
Emotionally, such an attitude leads to problems, and the stronger the attitude, the more problematic it becomes. Attachment to something not in our control, be it an object or a person, leads to us putting our happiness in the hands of Fate. After all, Fate decides if what we’re attached to stays by our side or leaves us. And so, Fortuna, the goddess of chance and luck, can toy with us, making us feel happy one moment and sad another.
And we often try hard to prevent ourselves from parting from the people and things we’re attached to, which the story of Anakin Skywalker shows us as he betrays the Jedi Order and turns to the Dark Side just to keep Padmé in his life. From a Stoic point of view, Anakin is not free. His desires enslave him. He is a plaything of Fate. If he were free, his actions wouldn’t be dictated by outside circumstances, attachments and desires, and disabling emotions (like fear, hate, and jealousy).
Instead, he would act from a place of reason, free from troubling emotions regarding external things. At its core, trying to keep the people we’re attached to in our lives is a selfish pursuit. When we desire people to be with us, we generally don’t desire this for them, nor the betterment of the common good, but to fulfill our own selfish desire, which is the ‘not wanting to part from what we’re fond of.’
Devoted to our interests, we tend to make decisions that aren’t smart or wise. We just want to fulfill our desires. And, as Epictetus told us: whatever appears to stand in the way of our interest, we hate, accuse, and curse, which clearly shows in the ways of Anakin, who causes death and destruction just to fulfill his selfish needs.
I quote: “For its nature is to love nothing so much as its own interest; this to it is father and brother and kinsmen and country and God. When, for instance, we think that the gods stand in the way of our attainment of this, we revile even them, cast their statues to the ground, and burn their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of Asclepius to be burned when his loved one died.” End quote.
We could say that the widely celebrated romantic love and other strong attachments to things not in our control are potential recipes for disaster. How much violence and murder has humanity cast upon itself on account of these attachments? When a friend dies, your spouse leaves you for a lover, or a child wishes to never see you again, you likely feel that something that’s yours is taken from you.
The separation from the people you care for probably comes with the notion of loss: you’ve lost someone. But from a Stoic point of view, this isn’t the correct way to look at such events: you don’t lose people; you return them, as they were never yours. Never say of anything, “I have lost it”; but, “I have returned it.” Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your wife dead? She is returned. (...) said Epictetus.
The fourth book of Epictetus’ discourses thoroughly explains why external factors like our children, family members, or spouses are not in our control and, thus, not actually ours. Most of what we call ‘possessions’ aren’t truly our possessions, as we can lose these things in the blink of an eye. When it comes to the people we’re attached to, most of us probably find ourselves in a gray area.
In the days of Epictetus, slavery was normal. People used to own other people as possessions. Epictetus used to be an enslaved person himself before he began teaching philosophy in Rome, and later Nicopolis. But today, slavery isn’t common anymore, and we generally don’t see the people surrounding us, be it employees, family members, or friends, as our possessions.
However, we often still tend to feel a degree of entitlement to the presence of these people. We think that our friends and family owe us time and attention, our employees arrive at work on time, and our spouses don’t do things that make us feel unhappy. Moreover, we often feel connected to the people we care for as if they are part of ourselves and belong in our lives.
But as much as we think that something or someone is ours, it’s probably not the case. External things are never ours because if they were, they would always do as we wish; they’d never leave us, and no one would be able to take them away. Thus, from a Stoic point of view, ownership of external things is just an appearance; it’s at odds with reality.
I quote: “When you want your body to be whole, is the matter under your control, or not?”—It is not.—“And when you want it to be well?”—Nor that, either.—“And to live or to die?”—Nor that, either.—“Therefore, your body is not your own possession; it is subject to everyone who is stronger than you are.”—Granted.—“And your farm, is it under your control to have it when you want, and as long as you want; and in the condition that you want?”—No.—“And your paltry slaves?”—No.—“And your clothes?”—No.—“And your paltry house?”—No.—“And your horses?”—None of these things.—“And if you wish by all means your children to live, or your wife, or your brother, or your friends, is the matter under your control?”—No, nor that, either. End quote.
In addition, Epictetus argued that all these external things are subject to the “revolution of the universe,” something outside of any human being’s control unless this person possesses the might of an omnipotent God. When Padmé told Anakin he’s not all-powerful, he answered: “Well, I should be,” as he realized that the only way to keep Padmé secure is through ultimate, all-encompassing power.
It’s not a surprise that we often speak of romantic love as ‘passionate,’ as, like nothing else in the world, the infatuation with another person engages the passions, leading to volatile emotional experiences. Again, today’s society seems to view the engagement in passionate romances as positive; many even consider “being in love” as one of the highest possible states available to the individual.
Unsurprisingly, the ancient Stoics saw the passions as problematic. As explored in a previous video called ‘How Not to Be Pathetic,’ they distinguished four passions: pleasure, appetite, distress, and fear. Being attached to someone, let alone deeply in love, accompanies a symphony of all four passions. When a beloved friend is with us, we experience ‘pleasure.’ When he isn’t there, we experience an appetite for his presence.
The woman who a man is in love with, he fears losing. And when she leaves him or dies, he likely experiences excruciating pain. But, according to the Stoics, the thoughts preceding the passions are irrational judgments of the situation. For example, there’s nothing inherently good about someone being in your presence from a Stoic point of view. There’s also nothing inherently wrong about a person leaving you or dying.
Loss and death are part of life; neutral at best. But if we irrationally judge things as good and others as bad, we’ll evoke the passions as our thinking is disobedient to reason. And so, the Stoics seek to uproot the passions using reason. Epictetus gives the following advice: “This is what you ought to practice from morning till evening. Begin with the most trifling things, the ones most exposed to injury, like a pot, or a cup, and then advance to a tunic, a paltry dog, a mere horse, a bit of land; thence to yourself, your body, and its members, your children, wife, brothers. Look about on every side and cast these things away from you. Purify your judgments, for fear lest something of what is not your own may be fastened to them, or grown together with them, and may give you pain when it is torn loose.” End quote.
When Anakin and Padmé discussed their impossible romance and their feelings for each other, Padmé wanted to follow the voice of reason. Because of Anakin’s allegiance to the Jedi Order and her position as a senator, a romantic relationship was out of the question, regardless of how they felt about each other. But Anakin stated, and I quote: “You’re asking me to be rational. That is something that I know I cannot do. Believe me, I wish I could just wish away my feelings, but I can’t.” End quote.
But could he? According to Stoicism, with the right mindset, discipline, and practice, it’s very well possible to let go of strong attachments to other people and be able to bear it when someone close to us departs from our lives. Should a practitioner of Stoicism be emotionless in the face of loss? Maintaining equanimity after someone close to us dies is challenging for most people. Freeing oneself from the passions lies at the core of Stoicism, but it’s very difficult to accomplish and takes time and tremendous practice.
In all likelihood, even ancient Stoic sages like Epictetus, Chrysippus, and Seneca weren’t perfect at it (but at least they tried). Also, the Stoics acknowledge what they call ‘proto-emotions,’ which are feelings that arise automatically, and we don’t have control over them. A proto-emotion could be an initial startling when encountering danger or one’s eyes tearing up when hearing about a tragedy.
Stoicism isn’t about repressing these involuntary bodily reactions but about freeing ourselves from the passions that arise afterward if we think irrationally. One of Seneca’s letters shows us an interesting take on handling the grief of loss. In 41 AD, the new empress Messalina accused Seneca of adultery (an affair that some historians have doubted). Initially, the Senate sentenced Seneca to death, but Emperor Claudius commuted this to exile.
And so, Seneca departed to the island of Corsica, where he spent the next eight years. While in exile, he sent a letter to his mother Helvia, in which he offered her consolation as she was grieving her son’s fate. Seneca told her not to make excuses to weep without limit. He also mentioned that their ancestors reserved ten months of mourning for women who had lost their husbands and thus regulated their grief by ‘limiting’ it.
I quote: “They did not forbid them to mourn, but they set limits to their grief: for while it is a foolish weakness to give way to endless grief when you lose one of those dearest to you, yet it shows an unnatural hardness of heart to express no grief at all: the best middle course between affection and hard common sense is both to feel regret and to restrain it.” End quote.
And so, it seems that Seneca advised a middle way: to grieve moderately and with limitation. Such a view on grief is different from the ideal described by Epictetus, which is a dispassionate individual who’s not disturbed by the loss of loved ones. But the vast majority of people (including Seneca’s mother) aren’t Stoic sages and will experience grief. For them, Seneca offers a realistic way to deal with loss; not the complete extinction of the passions, but moderation.
Nevertheless, he urged his mother to take responsibility for her emotional well-being by studying philosophy and applying herself to it. “This will heal your wounds and take away all your sadness,” he wrote. Thank you for watching.