Preparation

Introduction

All of philosophy is preparation.  It focuses us on the most brutal aspects of life so that we can deal with them with equanimity or pick ourselves up after taking the hits.

Life is "the greatest of contests" and like boxing or other sports, you are going to take hits as you practice and play the game. Epictetus (2014) discusses this in Discourses 3.25.

Of the things that you initially proposed for yourself, consider which you have achieved and which you haven’t, and how it gives you joy to recall some of them and pain to recall others, and, if possible, try to recover even those that have slipped from your grasp.  For those who are engaged in the greatest of contests shouldn’t flinch, but must be prepared also to take blows.  For the contest that lies in front of us is not in wrestling or the pancration, in which, whether or not one meets with success, it is possible for one to be of the highest worth or of little, and by Zeus, to be most happy or most miserable; no, this is a contest for good fortune and happiness itself.  What follows, then? In this contest, even if we should falter for a while, no one can prevent us from resuming the fight, nor is it necessary to wait another four years for the next Olympic Games to come around, but as soon as one has recovered and regained one’s strength, and can muster the same zeal as before, one can enter the fight; and if one should fail again, one can enter once again, and if one should carry off the victory one fine day, it will be as if one had never given in.

I came across this idea of 'entering the fight again' before I knew it was Epictetus.  The movie Rocky Balboa (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2006) expressed this same idea, when the main character said,

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t always sunshine and rainbows; it's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now if you know what you're worth, go out and get what you're worth, but you got to be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because of him or her or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you, you're better than that.

Life is the great contest, and the days, weeks, months and years repeat.  As part of the growing process and as part of demonstrating our art of life, we ought to learn from the past, and prepare for what is ahead.  Preparing is adapting and anticipating.  Preparation is getting ready to jump back into the daily battles and relationships of life.  We have the past and experience and examples of others in our view.  We can now anticipate them and prepare for them.

The three biggest preparation exercises I've incorporated into my life are:

Premeditatio malorum

Negative visualization

Gratitude

Premeditatio malorum

While it is translated to mean "premediated evils" the more appropriate way to think of it is "planning for the worst-case scenario."  The Stoic does not think of these indifferents as evils, but rather acknowledges the sway many of these indifferents have on us and that we can minimize our emotional dependence on them by seeing them in the philosophically correct and wise perspective.

Perhaps the most oft-cited premeditatio malorum is Marcus Aurelius' (2014) morning pep talk in Meditations 2.1.  In it, he prepares for the daily grind by anticipating "meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial" people and that just because others choose to live this way, does not mean he has to live that way.  Rather, he should recall that all people were meant to work together, like the upper and lower rows of teeth working together to masticate food.

In my opinion, premeditatio malorum ought to specifically address events and social interactions we may encounter in our daily lives which may cause us to lose our equanimity.  Therefore, any vices and anti-social behavior we may encounter from other people or events which may or may not involve people is in scope for this exercise.

There are a couple of approaches to practicing this exercise.  One, you may decide to dedicate time to brainstorm countless events and people with unsocial behavior by noting each one in a long list.  You could then dedicate time to work through the list of how you ought to act virtuously in each situation.  A second way you could practice it would be to limit the scope to the day ahead and think of the high-probability scenarios you may encounter that day or week.  This would be a "just-in-time" way of anticipating worst-case scenarios, but it has the weakness of not being comprehensive or imaginative.  I would recommend a blend of both approaches, by finding time once a week to brainstorm ideas and then spend time preparing for each scenario.  Then, during your morning preparation, think on specific, probable events for the day.

In the summer of 2020 during the world-wide pandemic of Covid-19, the company I work for suffered greatly and posted four consecutive quarterly losses in it's earning reports.  The corporation reacted aggressively to conserve cash and as part of these efforts made a decision to slash its workforce significantly.  I, along with thousands of people began to anticipate the event of being laid off.  While I had thought of this scenario happening to me before 2020, I had never expected the probability to be so high.  My premeditatio malorum of losing my job became clearer in 2020 as I applied specific analysis of what I would do and how I would react if I received that news.  Prior to the pandemic, when I had thought of this scenario, I only thought of it at a high-level: I would simply update my resume and begin looking for a new job.  But this time, with the prospect being much more likely, and I being much later in my career, I needed to coach myself to view the job loss in the proper perspective.  And then I had to spend more time thinking of a detailed plan for supporting my family while pursuing a new career that might lead to greater fulfillment.  After about a week of contemplating this event and mapping various financial scenarios, I felt secure in knowing how I would act virtuously in the event I received the news of being laid off.

I keep a journal of many other different types of events and scenarios I might face.  As part of my daily exercise, I ask myself what catastrophes will happen today and then I prepare to deal with them.  Scenarios such as losing my phone, identify theft, a knee injury in basketball, if my family ran out of food, if leg and back pain persist for the rest of my life, if my wife were confined to a wheel chair the rest of her life, if one of my kids gets cancer, if our home were to flood during the a pandemic, or if my boss were to yell at me in a meeting.  There are many more scenarios I've thought of and written about, but this gives the reader a flavor of events and scenarios and people issues that have caused me to stop, think and prepare for them.

Negative Visualization

While some people may think premeditatio malorum and negative visualization are the same, I tend to think of them slightly differently.  To me, premeditatio malorum deals with the realm of events, scenarios and people.  Negative visualization deals more with possession and permanent loss.  Indeed, there may be some overlap in the two areas, but one is more situational and the other is more about permanent loss of possessions and death (permanent loss of relationships).

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (2014) is full of reminders of his own mortality.  He constantly reminded himself of the short lives of others and how he too would succumb to the same fate.  Life is a brief journey and when you make port, you leave the boat! In Meditations 3.3 he wrote,

You climbed aboard, you set sail, and now you have come to port. So step ashore!

This exercise of remembering one's own personal loss of life is the essence of practicing philosophy: it is preparing to die.  If you can be at peace with your own death, then loss and pain from all other things are comparatively insignificant.  Perhaps this is why Marcus and other Stoic practitioners focused so much on death.  Ward Farnsworth (2018, p.54) succinctly notes the benefits of contemplating one's own death as it can "stimulate humility, fearlessness, moderation and other virtues."  Seneca (n.d., 26.10) notes the ultimate benefit of preparing for one's death: complete freedom.

He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery; he is above any external power, or, at any rate, he is beyond it. What terrors have prisons and bonds and bars for him? His way out is clear. There is only one chain which binds us to life, and that is the love of life. The chain may not be cast off, but it may be rubbed away, so that, when necessity shall demand, nothing may retard or hinder us from being ready to do at once that which at some time we are bound to do.

For my part, I've come to accept my inevitable death.  I know with every day I get out of bed; with every passing minute; with every meeting I attend; with every hug and kiss of my loved ones; with every minute spent in traffic or playing chess or reading or writing or sick in bed, I march ever closer to death.  Seneca (n.d., 24.20) reminds us that "every day a little of our life is taken from us; even when we are growing, our life is on the wane."  This specter stands by my side all the time and I am keenly aware of its presence, always.  I feel the sting of every bit of sand of time slip out of my hands as the weight of it lightens.  Soon I won't feel it anymore.  This constant reminder grants me the gift of impatience for useless things and quarrels.  I want to learn wisdom and practice it so that I may best use the most rarest of resources I possess: time.

Equally weighted on my mind are the deaths of my wife and children.  I look to my parents, grandparents and older relatives for guidance in the loss of loved ones.  The closest death I've had to deal with is my father-in-law, who died at age 66.  It was sudden and unexpected.  One minute I was in a meeting at work, the next I was sitting at my desk talking to my emotional mother-in-law who haltingly asked me to be with her daughter (my wife), when she learned of the news.  All four of my grandparents have passed - I only knew two of them.  My sister-in-law lost her new-born baby.  I've lost aunts and uncles on both sides of the family.  My parents are still alive (see footnote 1) at ages 94 and 83 and I know that each day may bring the phone call that they have passed.

The one story from my older relatives about death, that has stuck with me, is that of my uncle Ken who died as a 15 year old Boy Scout.  He was on a scout trip, and was bitten by a tick and contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever.  For ten days, he suffered and worsened until the local doctor came and monitored his heart-rate, which was slowing.  My dad, uncle and aunts gathered around his bed while the doctor said, "the beat is getting weaker ... now ... now ... now; he's gone" and then pulled the bed sheet over his head.  The chores still had to be done that night and my uncle Howard performed uncle Ken's chores, half-blinded by his tears.  Uncle Howard noted that even uncle Ken's dog, Copper, knew Ken had passed away and hid under the barn all night long.

While I won't go into details here, I have spent time contemplating the premature death of my wife and children.  Indeed their deaths will be heart-breaking, but by spending time with these emotionally charged scenarios, and by reading the accounts of death and talking to loved ones who have experienced this loss, I prepare myself for these losses.

All this talk of one's death and the deaths of loved ones certainly puts all other possessions into perspective.  Even as I write about all this death, when I pivot to contemplating the loss of my computer or truck or home, they seem so trivial.  For me, it is not so hard to contemplate the loss of possessions, as we have experienced so much of it already.  In the summer of 2017, our home was flooded by hurricane Harvey.  We "lost" our home for about 7 months.  Every day we lived with the inconveniences of not having a kitchen, a washer, a dryer and a place to call home.  Later in the spring of 2020, my son's SUV, which belonged to my father-in-law when he was alive, was stolen from the mechanic's shop.  While the monetary value was not much, the sentimental value was significant.  We thought it was going to be gone forever, but it was found abandoned and we were able to recover it and begin the process of restoring it.

One final example of loss comes as recently as of February 2021.  On Super Bowl Sunday, when Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, my wife began to feel quite weak.  By Monday morning, she had a significant fever and we suspected she had contracted Covid-19.  Later in the afternoon, we took her to get tested and her results came back positive.  She was able to get some medication to minimize the effects of the corona virus.  Four days later, I came down with the same virus and then about three days later, I lost all my sense of taste and smell.  At the time of this writing, it is about two weeks since I had it and I have still not regained my sense of taste and smell.  While I had not previously contemplated the loss of taste and smell, I have spent a lot of time contemplating the permanent loss of my senses.  Again, the more I contemplate my own death and the deaths of my loved ones, the loss of smell and taste seems so insignificant and any anxiety or emotion I would have felt for that loss is diminished greatly.

Gratitude

Stoic preparation over loss is not about being concerned with morbidity and having a sour demeanor.  Rather, it is precisely about securing for oneself freedom from anxieties and dependence.  The added effect of meditating on all these losses is that one becomes much more grateful for what one still has.  My love for my wife and children, especially when I deeply contemplate their deaths, increases significantly and I am grateful that they are alive.  Minor quibbles and annoyances about their behavior vanishes, and, like the experiences of Ebenezer Scrooge or George Bailey, I rediscover the joy of relationships and living.

But like many things in life, the worth of the exercise is found in the habit.  You only get the benefit of clean teeth when you brush often.  You only get the benefit of sleep when you go to bed every night.  And the same is true with premeditatio malorum, and negative visualization - if you don't consistently practice them often, you will find yourself becoming anxious and ungrateful.

Conclusion

Preparation is an endless process because life doesn't stop.  Because we Stoics do not lock ourselves up in a walled garden or in a mountain retreat, we will always throw ourselves into public life.  Events, scenarios and people will always test us and we have to be prepared to bring our A-game!  Premeditatio malorum and negative visualization go a long way to help us prepare for life.  And the more we prepare, the more we are grateful for what we have and enjoy now. 

Footnote

References

Aurelius, M. (2014). Meditations (M. Hammond, Trans.). Penguin Classics, An Imprint Of Penguin Books.

Epictetus. (2014). Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (R. Hard, Trans.). Oxford University Press.

Farnsworth, W. (2018). The practicing stoic. David R. Godine, Publisher.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. (2006). Rocky Balboa [Film]. Directed by Sylvester Stallone.

Seneca. (n.d.). Moral letters to Lucilius (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium) (R. M. Gummere, Ed.). Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius