Shipwrecks and Stoicism

The Stoic philosopher Seneca said there's no other point of reading and studying if not to live a happy life.

Roman statesman, lawyer, orator, and philosopher Cicero said, "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

Living a happy life and learning how to die. That just about covers it.

Entrepreneurs live and die by their businesses. This was especially true for Phoenician merchant Zeno. His family sold expensive, rare Tyrian purple dye, prized by the wealthy. It was extracted from the mucus of a few species of sea snails, and it took thousands of snails to produce a usable amount of Tyrian purple.

Sometime around 300 BC, Zeno set sail on the Mediterranean bound for Athens with a (literal) boatload of Tyrian purple dye. The details are hazy, but somewhere on the journey, Zeno's ship sank. He lost everything. This was before insurance, so his entire family's fortune was tied up in that shipment.

After losing the family fortune, it would've been understandable if Zeno wallowed in self-pity, spending the rest of his days in the 300 BC Athenian equivalent of the corner bar. Instead, he settled in Athens and began studying philosophy, initially under Athenian philosopher Crates. After years as the understudy, Zeno eventually founded Stoicism, named after the Stoa Poikile, the literal "painted porch" where Zeno and his followers gathered. As modern-day Stoic Ryan Holiday writes in Lives of the Stoics, "Of all possible origins for a philosophy of resilience and self-discipline, as well as indifference to suffering and misfortune, unexpected disaster rings the most true... it was something [Zeno] used—it was a call he decided to answer, spurring him to a new life and a new way of being."

A school of philosophy founded on loss, ruin, and tragedy is one built for the realities of everyday life. Since I stumbled onto Stoicism maybe a decade ago, I've read just about everything Ryan Holiday has written, plus a few other Stoicism books, and I've listened to a podcast series multiple times. But I'm not a Stoic. "The unexamined life is not worth living," so I've also dabbled in journaling, meditating, and online writing (ahem). But I'm not a journaler, meditator, or writer.

These are just things I've spent time reading, practices I've tried, or concepts I've explored—things like amor fati (love your fate), memento mori (remember you will die), presence, gratitude, and enough-ness. But the power is that they've made me aware of what's going on inside and given me a perspective of a much bigger world.

It wasn't a shipwreck where I lost a literal fortune that these practices became real for me. It was much more common. It was much more universal.

When I lost my mom last year, having perspective and a philosophy to fall back on provided me a psychological cushion. I didn't read Stoicism, journal, meditate, or start a blog specifically to shield myself against life's curveballs, but that's how it worked. While I was sad and felt (and still feel) like a piece is missing from my life's puzzle, the overwhelming feeling was gratitude. Gratitude that I had her for 38 years, when many kids lose their moms young or don't get to know them at all. Gratitude that she chose to fight, giving my boys time to make memories with her (like how good her cookies were). Gratitude that she was no longer suffering.

Turns out, Zeno had the right idea. A life of perspective and gratitude in the hardest times is a happy life. And a life that can be at peace with death is a happy life.

I think Seneca and Cicero would approve.