When You Are Sick, Courage Is the Best Medicine
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations , Lifehacker’s weekly dip in the pool of stoic wisdom and a guide to using its waters to meditate and improve your life.
This week’s selection is made by Seneca. Yesterday I was very sick, so I decided to find stoic wisdom in how to cope with the disease. Here are Seneca’s thoughts:
I would rather be free from torture; but if the time comes when it will have to be endured, I will wish that I could behave in him with courage, honor and courage. Of course, I prefer that there was no war; but if war does happen, I will wish that I could nobly endure the wounds, hunger, and whatever war entails. I’m not crazy enough to crave illness; but if I have to suffer from an illness, I will wish that I did not do anything that would show a lack of restraint, and nothing masculine. The conclusion is that deprivation is not desirable, but virtue is desirable, which allows us to patiently endure adversity.
Moral Letters to Lucilius, number 67
What does it mean
Getting sick is like torturing. No one wants to be sick, but Seneca believes that when you are sick, you must exercise restraint, courage, and above all, virtue. But what does he mean by “virtue”? He further explains in a letter:
For what is desirable is not a simple endurance of torture, but courage. Therefore, I wish this “brave” endurance; and that’s a virtue.
So the virtue in this situation is courage. You see, the Stoics considered health to be indifferent, or something uncontrollable. It was bad to be healthy or bad to be sick, just like that. When the illness hit, all that mattered was how you behave.
What to take from there
What will courage look like during illness? First, you need to watch what you say. That is, you should not talk all the time about how sick you are. Do not complain to everyone you see about your current state, because it will pass, and these words are meaningless. Maintain your responsibility to others and do not burden them with your illness. They know what it is like. Nobody wants to hear about it, especially in great detail. Epicurus once said: “During my illness, I did not talk about my bodily suffering, and I did not talk about these topics with those who visited me.”
Second, stop obsessing over your illness. Doing nothing other than lying in bed and moaning about how awful you are will only make you feel worse. Keep your mind busy with other tasks and concentrate on other things. Read a book, watch a movie, play a game, do some work, etc. Again, there is nothing you can do to improve your condition other than getting plenty of rest and fluid, so now is the time to practice your mind and not matter.
Finally, change your daily routine as little as possible. If you are seriously ill, then, of course, go to bed and rest. But if you have a minor cold, try to get on with your day as best you can (except for taking precautions to avoid infecting others). You don’t want to convince yourself that you are feeling much worse than you actually are, which in turn can make you very unwell. More importantly, you don’t want to use your cold as an excuse to do nothing all day. Don’t choose the easy way out. Get well but show some courage. It will not cure your illness, but it will help with your symptoms. Remember, you may not want to get sick, but you can choose how you behave.