Is This The Condition I So Feared?

I rounded a bend in the trail only to be faced with yet another steep climb on slippery and muddy terrain. I’d been hiking for 19 miles and should have come upon my planned campsite for the night, but it was nowhere to be found.  After another mile of slippery slogging I found my site and set up camp.  Then the rain came.  Hard rain.

Setting up a tent in the rain sucks.  It’s difficult to prevent water from getting inside, and once inside it’s usually there to stay.  Soaked and worn down from a long day with my 35lb pack I just wanted to sleep. 

As I cooked and ate in the downpour the temperature kept plunging and wet snowflakes started falling.  Based on the forecast I brought a 40-degree sleeping bag.  The snowflakes showed it was already quite colder than that, and the night had just begun.  Oh this was going to be a fun one.

 

Old Wisdom

Regular readers know I’m a fan of Stoic philosophy.  I think there’s tremendous wisdom in ancient thought, and looking to the past for answers shouldn’t be shunned but embraced. 

One of my favorite stoicism quotes is from Seneca is:

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I so feared?

There are of course various degrees to which this philosophy can be taken.  Additionally, the meanings of scantiest, cheapest, course, and rough are very subjective.

For a person who lives lavishly, eating at Applebees and staying at a Holiday Inn Express on vacation could be seen as extreme suffering.  While an extremely frugal person would consider going out to eat at all, even Applebees, a huge luxury. 

My friend in Alaska has lived off the grid for almost 2 decades.  She has only solar panels and a bit of propane to power things.  Most Americans would never even consider living like she does and would classify her as a lunatic. 

She’s one of the happiest people I know.

What Seneca is preaching is simply the occasional practice of voluntary discomfort.  He elaborates in this quote:

It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs manoeuvres, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil.

Man I wish I could write prose that elegant.

 

No Enemy In Sight

I fell asleep to the sound of freezing rain and snow assaulting my tent.  But sleep was short lived.  My shivering woke me, and I couldn’t get warm. 

I’ve slept in the wild literally hundreds of nights in my life, in every climate imaginable from jungles to Antarctica.  I knew I probably wasn’t going to get hypothermic, but nevertheless I was really cold and miserable. 

It went on all night – short bouts of sleep followed by endless periods of shivering.  On a thin air mattress on the cold ground.  If I attempted to pack up and hike to get warm, I’d just get more soaked in the process.

 

The Catastrophizer

I’ve always had a scarcity mindset in life.  It was passed to me from parents, both born in 1929 and children of the Great Depression. 

I tend to catastrophize things.  It brings anxiety.  You would think that being financially independent would cure that, but deep seated beliefs and behaviors are nagging things and hard to kick. 

I still remember seeing the chemotherapy and radiation bills for my Father’s treatments in the late 1980’s as a teenager, they were well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I think he made $26,000 a year.  A thin protective layer of insurance is all that kept us from disaster.

I reached financial independence about 7 years ago and since then have been running the score up in my favor.  Sometimes I look at my net worth and think “really dude, you’re good. Just fully retire and do whatever, you’re more than good.” 

Other times however I think, what if it all goes to shit?  Growing up in the hood I saw so many peoples lives devolve quickly into, well, shit.  That kind of stuff left a mark on my psyche. 

But what if it really does go to shit?

 

Fortify Oneself

After a long night of little sleep and lots of shivering, I laid in my tent and saw daylight breaking.  I was still really cold, but fine otherwise.  I thought “Well that sucked but I survived, is this the worst that could happen?” 

In other words – is this the condition I so feared? 

If it all went to shit maybe I’d have to live in a tent in the woods for a while.  Sure it’s not an ideal way to live long term, but I’d survive.  And I’d rebound.  

I do what many consider crazy activities like long endurance events, crazy ice climbing, or even just camping because it boils life down to the basics. 

Those activities are a healthy reminder that life involves suffering, and it’s unavoidable.  They’re my way of practicing Seneca’s advice, of fortifying the walls from the enemy that’s nowhere in sight. 

Yes it’s voluntary suffering and I’ve been to more than enough third world countries to have seen the plight of those who suffer involuntary.  Having seen lots of real suffering in the world, I feel that engaging in it voluntarily – no matter how contrived it may seem – is a good way of keeping my humanity. 

One hundred percent happiness and contentment all the time in perpetuity would be the opposite of the human condition, and while perhaps desirable in a theoretical sense it’s not worth a second of mental energy due to it’s impossibility. 

I prefer the possible, the real.  And that involves times of suck. 

 

Is This The Condition I So Feared?

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
—Mark Twain

As my catastrophizing mind gets closer and closer to full retirement, it’s getting burnt out.  Burnt out from over analyzing, and war gaming possibilities.  More and more I realize the wisdom of the ancients is as useful today as it was then. 

So when that future bad thing happens – and it surely will – I hope to have done the necessary work to be able to ask “is this the condition I so feared?”.