The Stoic is cosmopolitan

Nope, wrong one.

Interesting, but nope again.


Cosmopolitan in it's old, little understood, sadly too often reserved for just those who travel around staying in luxury hotels kind of.


Two weeks ago I'd planned on doing a short series about fatherhood, but hey, the baby is here, and being thrust into fatherhood kind of removes the immediate will to write about it.


I'm working on the idea of home this week with my students, and it got me to thinking about the way that Epictetus develops the idea of a cosmopolitan person, the person who regards the world as their home.


More on that as time and baby allows this week.

More like this

Decide what to be and go be it

That's a really fun smile.  That's Sharon Lebell.

I've never met her, but sometimes there are people out there who you can just imagine really getting along with.









She is apparently a master player of the hammered dulcimer.  I couldn't really say what a hammered dulcimer is, but Google of course can, so here it is:  





Not that I've ever heard her play the dulcimer.  If I'd never looked at her website I'd never have known that she played it.  I "know" her from her translations of Epictetus.  I feel a sort of kindredness to her.  Here is someone who took the time to become a master of the hammered dulcimer, who first wrote a book about naming children, and then who wandered into the realm of Epictetus, Stoic philosophy, and contemplating the good life.

Some of us take roundabout ways to reach what eventually feels natural to us.  Others find a way to get there young, and, sadly, most of us never really move out onto that path.  I don't know whether Sharon was the first or the second, but I find myself definitely moving through the first.  Sometimes I feel like David Byrne, waking up, looking around, and asking myself, "How did I get here?"

Somewhere along the way I asked myself the question, paralleled in the title with a song by the Avett Brothers, and here translated from Epictetus by Sharon Lebell:

"Who exactly do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to be?  What are your personal ideals?  Whom do you admire?  What are their special traits that you would make your own?"

And once you ask yourself, you have to face up to it.  You are not, no matter what your momma told you, perfect, and you will never have the chance to be perfect, but you do have the chance to be better, to be more at peace, to be more happy and open and forgiving and honest.

 "It's time to stop being vague.  If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.  If you have a daybook, write down who you're trying to be, so that you can refer to this self-definition.  Precisely describe the demeanor you want to adopt so that you may preserve it..."

The banquet of life

Some chapters are boring, some are interesting.  Some people seem to be a little bland, but when they stand up to speak they passionately set forth on their topic.  Grand ideas are floated by some students in the attempt to solve all problems, while others are happy to deal with the details.  You open your mouth and say something interesting, and the next day you open your mouth and sound like an idiot.  You take it as it comes I suppose.  Being in Kingston for classes and discussing interesting ideas with other students always takes me to a little piece from Epictetus that never fails to put a smile on my face:

Remember that you ought to conduct yourself
as if you were at a banquet.
When something is passed around to you
stretch out your hand and take it politely.
If it passes by you, don't ask for it to come back,
it's not its time.
Perhaps there'll be some left when it comes back around.
 (Encheiridion, 15)

Always looking backwards

The checkout line at the grocery store is perhaps one of the most boring places in the world.  It's a non-place really.  You are only there because you aren't at the place you would like to be - at the cashier.  This kind of situation is a dreamland for modern marketers.  Turn your head to the right and you'll see all the hydrogenated corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, and preservatives you can stuff into brightly colored wrappers.  Turn your head to the left and you'll see junk that is even worse for you.  Did Brad really dump Angelina in Nice?  Her thighs really have cellulite?  Is that a baby bump?

Where did our carefully protected individual control over our lives go in that short bit of time? To paraphrase Epictetus, "If a person gave your body away to a stranger walking down the road, you would certainly be angry, and yet you feel no shame in handing over your own mind."

The Second Handle

If you ask me, names are pretty important things.  If you call it Constantinople instead of Istanbul, you're saying a lot. A little over a year from now someone will be calling me Dad instead of Cameron.  That's a pretty big change in responsibilities.  I've had a lot of names in my day, and I've given out my fair share of nicknames and received my fair share of insults in return, so when it comes to names I pay attention.  Coming up with a name for this blog took me a good bit of time.

Chance played a good part in it.  I had the good fortune of having an English teacher who made us recite the poem "Invictus" at the beginning of each and every class.  At the time, I thought that it was probably the stupidest thing any teacher had ever had any student do, but she apparently had a much deeper reservoir of knowledge than my teenage self gave her credit for.  I repeated to myself each morning that I was the master of my fate, and that I was the captain of my soul.  A decade later it would do me some good.