Epictetus was an emancipated Greek slave turned Stoic philosopher living in the Roman Empire (55-135 AD). Many of his thoughts around what it means to be free have been collected into the short book Of Human Freedom. Using lots of examples from his own life, friends and culture of that time, he makes the case that cultivating (psychological) freedom was the ultimate goal of human life. Freedom, ‘the power to live our life the way we want’, and the peace and happiness that comes with it, could be achieved by giving up a desire for things to be a certain way and accepting things as they are. The opposite of freedom is slavery. External stuff like reputation, money, fame chain us down, simply because they are never truly in our control. How can you be free if there is any sort of dependency or condition on that freedom?

How do we get free?

Freedom therefore needs to be developed internally and be a total surrender to fate. It can’t be anything less. He talks a lot about the will of the gods, but this hasn’t got anything to do with faith or religion. It’s simply an acknowledgement that life is mysterious, complex, ever-changing and impossible to control. Any sort of manipulation, tweaking or what the Buddhists would describe as clinging is like slamming the brakes on a car that’s already sliding on a sheet of ice. Painful and not very useful.

Peace is hard work. Change is uncomfortable.

Freedom doesn’t come easy. And if there is a cliché image of the Stoics as miserly, grumpy men in rags, Epictetus comes across as the grumpiest. To him, the stakes (your peace and happiness) are high. Like a strict teacher, he wants nothing but your best effort. We need to take this introspection and reflection really seriously.

Not only does it take hard work, but a more stoic approach to life will change how you behave and respond in daily situations. Let’s say you’re a competitive runner. By recognizing that you are attached to your race results (external), you’ll naturally recognize that you can’t be happy if those results don’t go as planned. You might develop a healthier relationship with your running but it’s also going to be hard for you to race so blindly again. This is a common trade-off. Change is uncomfortable. It could be a diet. You might start to watch your snacking and suddenly find yourself battling nagging thoughts that you have ‘become boring’ or ‘too strict’. 

A common response to dealing with both the relentless reflection of Stoicism and the messiness of earthly life is to go and metaphorically live in a cave. Like devotees to any religion, Crossfit or new self-help book, it’s sometimes easier to blindly follow the rules. The problem is our minds. We can automatically bias toward behaviors that our minds have deemed to be safe and comfortable. Epictetus calls this out by asking us to consider why we read books in the first place. Books “are helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.” An introvert will happily do all the hard work, as long as it happens in their quiet study.

It can be difficult to get some separation between ourselves and our biases and proclivities. Here’s an example that shows how we tend to avoid uncomfortable stuff. Read it slowly and really see if you can feel your response:

“When you do this, it will drastically change your life and behavior. Things won’t be the same.”

See? I didn’t even say anything and yet a part of you likely felt some resistance. Maybe your mind dismissed it with an eye roll “oh yeah right, that won’t happen.” Or tried to temper it and control it “um that sounds a little bit extreme.”

If there’s a condition, you’re not free

Recognizing that your mind sticks blindly to preferences and ingeniously covers over its own trails is hard to do. It’s like a really good magic show, where you are both the mastermind behind the trick and the awe-struck audience. It can feel a bit like trying to negotiate with someone who is gaslighting you.

For months after I read Of Human Freedom, part of me felt confused and conflicted. My mind could not accept the contradiction that it had created for itself. The idea of mental discipline felt incompatible with relaxing control over my actions and embracing the random, chaotic nature of everyday life. The more I dug into that resistance the more my mind tried to point me in another direction, tried to make me to stop, to throw out the book or to dismiss my confusion as unimportant.

Ultimately, my mind was very happy to practice some of the ideas of Stoicism on the condition that it remained in a safe and comfortable zone. But freedom has no conditions.