Posted On: 2021-08-25 22:15:50
‘Stoicism’ is a philosophy that prospered for some 400 years in Ancient Greece and Rome, getting widespread supporters among all classes of society. It had one unbelievable and highly practical purpose: to teach people how to be calm, patient and confident in the face of overwhelming stress, anxiety and pain.
As per the studies, The four Stoic virtues — courage, justice, self-control, and wisdom — are meant to guide all choices and actions, great and small. In Stoicism, practising courage means consistently, deliberately, and rationally facing dangerous or socially uncomfortable situations in pursuit of noble causes. Justice means ensuring that all beings are treated fairly and self-control means, among other things, consciously and habitually making the choice to regulate appetites for food, drink, money, and sex. This involves calling out and countering injustice whenever and however it arises. Finally, you are said to be wise when you are able to unwaveringly judge what is good, bad, or neither.
Of all philosophies, Stoicism remains perhaps the most immediately relevant and useful for our uncertain and panicky times.
Stoicism can help us with four enigmas in particular:
1. Anxiety:
So many terrible things might happen, at all times. The usual way for somebody to cheer us up in that time period, when we’re mired in anxiety, is to tell us that we will, after all, be OK. The disturbing email might not be discovered, businesses could yet take off, there might be no gossip or you might be stuck in your head. But the Stoics bitterly opposed such a strategy, because they believed that anxiety thrives in the gap between what we fear might, and what we hope could happen. The larger the gap, the greater will be the vibrations, distress and disturbances of mood. To regain calm, what we need to do is orderly and effectively break every last remnant of hope. When we look our anxieties in the face and believe what life might be like if they came true, we stand to come to a crucial realisation: we will cope.
2. Fury:
We get angry on a daily basis especially with our partners, our children, colleagues, friends and politicians. We smash things up and hurt others and ourselves. The Stoics thought to anger a dangerous decadence, but most of all, a piece of stupidity, for in their interpretation, angry outbursts are only ever caused by one thing: an incorrect picture of existence. They are the bitter fruits of naivety.
Anger is, in the Stoic analysis, caused by the brutal collision of hope and reality. We don’t shout every time something sad results to us, only when it is sad and surprising. To be calmer, we must, therefore, learn to expect far less from life. Of course, our loved ones will deceive us, naturally, our colleagues will fail us, invariably our friends will lie to us… None of this should be a surprise. It may make us sad. It must never – if we are Stoics – make us angry. The wise person should aim to reach a state where simply nothing could suddenly disrupt their peace of mind.
3. Paranoia:
It is easy to think we’ve been singled out for terrible things. We wonder why it has happened to us. We tear ourselves apart with blame or direct bitter venom at the world. The Stoics want us to do neither: it may neither be our, nor anyone else’s, fault. Though not religious, the Stoics were fascinated by the Roman Goddess of fortune, known as Fortuna, whom they took to be the perfect metaphor for destiny. Fortuna, who had shrines to her all over the Empire, was popularly held to control the fate of humans and was judged to be a terrifying mixture of the generous and the randomly willful and spiteful. She was no meritocrat. She was depicted holding a cornucopia filled with goodies (money, love etc.) in one hand, and a tiller, for changing the course of life in the other. Depending on her mood, she might throw you down a perfect job or a beautiful relationship, and then the next minute, simply because she felt like it, watch you choke to death on a fishbone.
4. Loss of Perspective:
We naturally exaggerate our own importance in our day to day life. The incidents of our own lives appear very large in our view of the world. And so we get stressed and panicked, we curse and throw things across the room. To regain composure, we must regularly be reduced in our own eyes and keep a clear mindset. We must give up on the very normal but very difficult illusion that it really matters what we do and who we are.
Fundamentally, Stoicism enables all of us who are willing to use our capacity for reason to take steps to understand the nature of a problem and what we can do, given our skills and mindset, to solve it.
Crowdfunding platforms are raising funds along with the awareness of mental health.
Every mental health centre is dedicated to creating a supportive network and interface for individuals that experience mental health and face challenges, providing an opportunity for the experienced to escape their negative mentality and have a positive outlook in life. The main aim is to provide a secure and comforting place for people to come together and connect without fear or judgement from society.
GiveIndia, a crowdfunding platform started a programme "School Mental health Program" which started in the year 2016.
The program covered the below-mentioned pointer:
Seminars are organized in school creating awareness on mental health.
They sensitise them about suicide and how it can be prevented.
We make them aware of harm associated with addiction (Substance Use Disorders) and what are the risk factors of initiation of drug or substance use.
They provide counselling and treatment to those students to whom we have found mental health issues and ensure future treatment with teachers and advise them to involve the family members of students.
We need the Stoics more than ever. Every day confronts us with situations that they understood and wanted to prepare us for. Their teachings are dark and sobering yet at the same time, deeply soothing and at points even rather funny. They invite us to feel heroic and defiant in the face of our many troubles.
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