Free of Hope and Fear
This week you are learning about being "free of hope and fear," a state the Stoics sometimes called apatheia (in Greek, "a-PATH-ee-ah"), which simply means freedom from the disruptive passions that jerk us around. Hope and fear are a matched pair: both are the mind running ahead of the present moment, grasping at what might go well or bracing against what might go badly. Neither is happening right now, yet both can consume your entire day. The Stoics did not want you to become cold or indifferent; they wanted you to stop being a hostage to events that exist only in your imagination.
Passage
Instead of avoiding the fear of it, shall I die in lamentation and trembling? For the origin of sorrow is this—to wish for something that does not come to pass.
— Epictetus, Discourses 1.27.10
Reflection
Epictetus cuts to the root today. Sorrow, he says, comes from wishing for something that does not come to pass. This is precise and worth sitting with. The pain is not caused by the event itself; it is caused by the gap between what happened and what you wanted to happen. Fear, too, is a wish in disguise: you wish that a certain future will not arrive, and the mere possibility that it might causes suffering now. Both hope and fear are therefore forms of wishing, of demanding that reality comply with your preferences. Epictetus is not telling you to stop having preferences; he is showing you that clinging to them as requirements is the actual source of distress.
Go deeper
When you trace a current worry or disappointment back to its root, what specific wish or demand is hidden inside it?
Practice
Find the Wish
Think of something that is causing you anxiety or low-level dread today. Write it down. Then write: 'Underneath this, I am wishing that...' Complete the sentence honestly. Then ask yourself: is this wish about something within my control, or am I demanding something from the world that the world has no obligation to give?