The Stoics liked to draw parallels between the practice of philosophy and other, more physical pursuits that require concentrated effort to improve one’s ability.
One popular analogy was to present Stoicism as a type of training similar to that an athlete would undertake.
Where an athlete trains for an event, however, a Stoic trains for life. Where an athlete prepares for the rigors of competition, Stoic training means preparing for the difficulties that Fate will send our way.
The ancient Stoic teacher Epictetus in particular used athletic imagery to encourage his students to remain committed to the path of philosophy and never to give up on themselves:
Start by condemning what you’ve been doing, without letting that self-condemnation make you see yourself as a hopeless case. That is, don’t behave like those despicable people for whom to give in once is to surrender themselves completely, and who are swept away by the stream, so to speak. No, learn from the men responsible for boys’ physical training. A child has had a fall scored against him. ‘Get up,’ he says, ‘carry on wrestling until you’ve made yourself strong.’ That’s what you should do too. You should know that there’s nothing more malleable than the human mind. All you need to do is apply your will and the result you want happens, the correction is made. On the other hand, all you have to do is nod off and all is lost. Both ruination and help come from within.
Discourses 4.19.14
Epictetus reinforces the message elsewhere by comparing life to the Olympic Games:
For how long will you go on deferring the time when you demand the best of yourself and put an end to transgressing right reason?
…Now is the time for you to regard everything you know to be best as a law that you’re bound to obey. And, in the event that you’re faced with something painful or pleasant, or something that will enhance or damage your reputation, remember that the contest is on—that here, now, are the Olympic Games, that procrastination is no longer an option, and that just one defeat and surrender determines whether your progress is ruined or remains intact. That’s how Socrates got to be the person he was, by urging himself under all circumstances to pay attention to nothing other than reason. You may not yet be Socrates, but you ought to live as someone who wants to be Socrates.
Enchiridion 51
As ever with the Stoics, the message is a strong yet compassionate one.
It urges us to demand the best of ourselves, to apply reason each day and to follow virtue but, and this is important, it rejects the addition or repositioning of pain through self-blame—the only things we need to do if we fall short are, like the athlete, dust ourselves off, keep practicing, and try to get it right next time.
In one of his lectures, the Roman Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus explains how to use Stoicism to strengthen one’s soul.
Like Epictetus, Rufus also says that the practice of philosophy is a form of training.
This training begins by understanding what things are real goods and what things are real evils.
Stoicism’s real goods are its four cardinal virtues: Courage, Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation. Its real evils are the opposite of each of these virtues.
Good thoughts, intentions, and actions are virtuous. Bad thoughts, intentions, and actions are vicious.
If we’re to improve our own character and progress toward a good and happy life, we should shun everything that’s truly evil and pursue everything that’s truly good.
This also means not avoiding things that only seem evil and not pursuing things that only seem good.
Again, this is achieved through Stoic training.
As Rufus puts it, the soul is strengthened when it is trained for Courage by patience under hardship and for Temperance by abstinence from pleasures.
The same goes for Wisdom and Justice: we can maximize these in our character through training.
On the other hand, Rufus tells us, we must remember that neither pain nor death nor poverty nor anything else which is free from wrong is an evil, and that wealth, life, pleasure, or anything else which does not partake of virtue is not a good.
Whether we encounter non-goods or non-evils is ultimately outside our control. Whether we respond to them with virtue or vice is within our control.
It’s a mental game. When we strengthen our souls by training in virtue, we become better able to deal with whatever non-good or non-evil we face.
Completing his lecture, Rufus summarizes how a Stoic trains for life:
The person who is in training must strive to habituate himself not to love pleasure, not to avoid hardship, not to be infatuated with living, not to fear death, and in the case of goods or money not to place receiving above giving.
