Stoic Saturday: How to Act (Part 6)

In the final installment of breaking down Marcus Aurelius’s thoughts on the proper way to act, we come to my personal favorite line from Meditations – and in any of the Stoic writings I’ve seen so far.

Also See:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five

To stand up straight – not straightened.

I love this. To me this is much of what Stoicism is about in one simple sentence. What is our motivation on how to act? What is it that compels us to live a virtuous life? What keeps us on the right path? Is it some external factor, some pressure being applies to us that keeps us acting in a straightforward manner – even if it is against our will? Or is it our own inherent sense of virtue? Our own determination to live the kind of life and be the kind of person that we truly desire to be? If we are acting as we should, we should be keeping ourselves straight regardless of what pressures are applied on us from our circumstances.

This speaks to a central aspect of Stoicism – that we can’t control what happens, but we can control how we respond. The world is imperfect. Our environment, our circumstances, the people around us, all of these can (and probably will) try to bend you to their will. To stand straight, you can’t rely on help from the day to day world you live in. You must fortify yourself from the inside out.

As a parents, we all want to be good examples for our kids. We want to be strong heads of our families, to be people our kids look up to, to be able to instill in them the right way to act. Not just by what we tell them, but how we act. To stand straight is the opposite the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude that it can be easy to slip into. I would be willing to bet that most parents want to raise their kids to be better people than they are. Even if not everybody is completely self-aware enough to recognize their shortcomings, or the areas where they are not standing straight, I think there is almost an instinctual drive in parents to try to make their kids better – 2.0 versions of themselves if you will.

But how can we expect our kids to stand straight when we’ve allowed the world to bend us out of shape? We can’t.

The good news is, that if we can bend to vice, we can bend back to virtue. But we need to be intentional about it. Practice the Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom, even in small steps, and over time you will straighten yourself. Be intentional with the information and media you take in. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see too much content on living a better life through philosophy come my way on its own. I need to go find it, read it, absorb it, and use to block out the noise that will try to bend me.

I say practice the virtues, because it absolutely does take practice. I first started reading about Stoicism about five years ago, and I think I have made some improvements in myself, but the virtues are still far from second nature. I need to try to keep them top of mind. I need to be aware and catch myself when I need to be straightened. But if I can get a little better every day, stand a little straighter on my own, then the practice is paying off.

The world probably isn’t going to help you on its own, you need to help yourself. Your kids aren’t going to stand straight on their own, you need to show them how. Show your kids what inner strength looks like. What trying to live a virtuous life looks like. What doing the right thing just because it’s the right thing looks like. And do it from the strength you’ve developed within yourself, not because somebody or something has bent you in or out of shape. Stand straight – not straightened.