The Socrates Express

12. How to Cope like Epictetus

4:58 p.m. Somewhere in Maryland. On board Amtrak’s Capitol Limited, en route from Washington, D.C., to Denver, via Chicago.

Not more than thirty minutes into our journey, we stop. We wait. And wait. I do so impatiently, knowing I am disappointing Simone Weil but unable to stop myself.

It’s not the waiting that irks me so much as the not knowing why. A downed tree on the tracks? A freight train with the right of way? An imminent nuclear strike? I look at my phone as if it has the answers. (It does not.) I fidget. I look at my watch. I fidget some more.

We will sit here for hours, I fear. I will miss my connection in Chicago. That is not good, not good at all. The situation, I decide, calls for fretting. So I fret.

I am aware of the beauty that lies just outside my window: rows of chestnut oaks and flowering dogwoods lining the C&O Canal, and up there, a rich, blue sky. I do not enjoy this view, though, for that would interfere with my fretting. I need help. I need Stoic Camp.

I knew this the moment I spotted the ad. Nothing flashy. Black-and-white, no fancy graphics. “Gain a sense of ‘stoic calm’ by escaping to camp at the foot of the Snowy Range mountains,” it said.

We’re moving again. Perhaps my worrying was pointless, or perhaps its not insignificant energy propelled us forward. I’ve always believed my fretting holds the world together and, should I stop, even for a second, the universe would cease to exist.

I make my connection in Chicago and, before long, am heading west, toward Denver and, eventually, Wyoming’s Snowy Range. Amtrak goes many places. It does not go to Laramie, Wyoming. I must travel the last leg of the journey by bus. Except when we arrive at Denver’s Union Station there’s no sign of the bus. Reflexively, I catastrophize, and fret. The bus has left without me, or it doesn’t exist, never did and never will.

After what seems like hours but may have been twelve minutes, the bus arrives. I clamber on board and find a seat in the back. We’re moving, traversing space, just like a train. Only, it’s not the same.

A common Stoic exhortation is to “live in accord with nature.” The organizers of Stoic Camp take this advice literally. The grounds are snuggled in thick Wyoming forest, miles from the nearest town, which isn’t much of a town—just a gas station and three bars.

We Stoic campers gather in the main lodge for orientation. It’s a vast room, with high ceilings and, at one end, a serious fireplace, much needed even though it is late May. There’s talk of snow. From one wall, a giant stuffed elk looks down on us. The lodge’s so-called furniture consists of a hodgepodge of mismatched couches and stiff, plastic chairs—a jarring aesthetic that would displease Sei Shōnagon. If a ski lodge mated with a minimum-security prison, this would be the result.

We’re an odd bunch, we Stoic campers. There’s Greg, a thirty-something digital entrepreneur from New York, and Alexander, a cheery German consultant, and a smattering of grad students from the University of Wyoming: serious young men and women who look pained by existence, by the thought of existence, and who, during breaks, rush outdoors, no matter the weather, and smoke. Then there are us “graybeards,” as we’ve been dubbed: those drawn to Stoicism just in the nick of time.

We gather in a circle, the universal geometry of philosophical jam sessions and group therapy, sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups. A stout, cherubic man calls the meeting to order. Rob Colter is middle-aged, with an impressive paunch, a gray goatee, and quick, probing eyes. He looks like an aging, hipster Santa. When he is conveying something profound, which is often, he gently strokes his goatee.

“Welcome,” says Rob, in a tone that gives nothing away. “If you’ve seen the weather forecast, you know our Stoic abilities will be challenged.” It is late May, yet there is snow in the forecast. Lots of snow. I am concerned. I have packed for spring, not winter, and I have a flight to catch after Stoic Camp.

Rob is as paradoxical as the philosophy he loves. He reads ancient Greek and fly-fishes. He leads a healthy, outdoorsy life, yet also confesses to a “Panda Express problem.” He possesses a deep understanding of philosophy, yet isn’t afraid to confess ignorance, too. “I don’t know,” he says when asked a particularly sticky question. “I’ll have to think about that.” I like Rob.

A few years ago, he detected a surge of interest in Stoicism. “And I thought, well, the Stoic motto is ‘live in accord with nature’ and, hey, we’ve got plenty of nature around here.” He floated the idea of a Wyoming Stoic Camp to his fellow philosophers at the university, who replied, philosophically, “That’s fucking crazy. It will never work, but go ahead and try.” So he did. And here we are.

Rob tells us how he came to love Stoicism. It was the 1990s. He was studying philosophy in Chicago, home to “a real Plato scene.” Rob studied Plato, and his protégé Aristotle, not because he loved their ideas but because that was what serious students of philosophy did. “They were real philosophers, damn it,” he says, pounding his fist for emphasis. Sure, he was aware of others: Epicurus, the Cynics, and, yes, the Stoics, but these were not “real” philosophers, or so he thought.

Different philosophers appeal to different people at different times. Thoreau’s rebellious spirit attracts teens. Nietzsche’s flame-throwing aphorisms draw young adults. Existentialism’s emphasis on freedom appeals to the middle-aged. Stoicism is an older person’s philosophy. It is a philosophy for those who have weathered a few battles, suffered a few setbacks, known a few losses. It is a philosophy for life’s rough patches, large and small: pain, illness, rejection, annoying bosses, dry skin, traffic jams, credit card debt, public humiliation, delayed trains, death. Asked what he learned from philosophy, Diogenes, a proto-Stoic, replied: “To be prepared for every fortune.”

Stoicism, the unlikely progeny of a shipwreck, came of age during a time of great upheaval in ancient Greece and thrived during the rough-and-tumble world of the Roman Empire. Its most famous practitioners were variously exiled, executed, maimed, and ridiculed. Yet as Marcus Aurelius, himself a Stoic, demonstrates, they were also wildly successful.

More recent adherents include American war heroes and presidents. A Stoic thread runs throughout U.S. history: from the Founding Fathers, including George Washington and John Adams; to Franklin Roosevelt, who, when he famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” expressed a quintessentially Stoic idea; to Bill Clinton, who considers Marcus’s Meditations a marvelous piece of wisdom writing and his favorite book.

“Wisdom” is one of those words everyone knows but nobody defines. Psychologists have struggled for decades to nail down a working definition. In the 1980s, a group of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin sat down to hammer one out once and for all. The Berlin Wisdom Project identified five criteria that define wisdom: factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, life-span contextualism, relativism of values, and management of uncertainty.

The last criterion, I think, is the most important. We live in the age of the algorithm and artificial intelligence, with their tacit promise to manage the uncertainty, the messiness, of life. They have not. If anything, life feels less predictable, and messier, than ever.

This is where Stoicism shines. The philosophy’s core teaching—change what you can; accept what you can’t—is appealing in our tumultuous times. Stoicism offers a handrail, a way forward. I knew this, having read Marcus. What I didn’t know was how demanding the philosophy is, and how much fun.

Stoicism, the philosophy of tough times, was born of catastrophe. In about 300 BC, a Phoenician merchant named Zeno was sailing to the Athenian port of Piraeus when his ship capsized, his precious cargo of purple dye lost. Zeno survived the shipwreck and wound up in Athens, broke. One day, he stumbled upon a biography of Socrates, who was by then long dead.

“Where can I find a man like that?” Zeno asked the bookseller.

“Follow yonder man,” he replied, pointing to a shabbily dressed Athenian who happened to be walking by.

It was Crates, a Cynic. The Cynics were the hippies of the ancient world. They lived on little, owned nothing, and questioned authority. Zeno found the Cynics’ contrariness admirable, up to a point. Lacking, he thought, was a comprehensive philosophy, so he founded his own school.

Zeno set up shop under the stoa poikile (literally, “painted porch”), a long colonnade where people came to shop, conduct business, and talk. There, amid murals depicting battles real and mythological, Zeno delivered his lectures while pacing vigorously. Since they gathered at the stoa, these philosophers became known as Stoics.

Unlike the Epicureans, ensconced behind their garden wall, the Stoics practiced their philosophy publicly, in view of merchants and priests and prostitutes and anyone else passing by. For the Stoics, philosophy was a public act. They never shied from politics.

Toward the end of his life, Zeno liked to joke, “I had a good voyage when I was shipwrecked.” This would become a major theme of Stoicism: in adversity lies strength, and growth. As the Roman senator and Stoic philosopher Seneca said: “No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely… disaster is virtue’s opportunity.”

On day one of Stoic Camp, I discover that everything I thought about Stoicism is wrong. The stereotype of the stony, heartless Stoic is as erroneous as is the one about the gourmand Epicurean. The Stoic is no cold fish. He does not suppress strong feelings, putting on a brave face as he trembles inside. Stoics do not jettison all emotions, only the negative ones: anxiety, fear, jealousy, anger, or any of the other “passions” (or pathe, the closest ancient Greek word to “emotion”).

Stoics are not joyless automatons. They are not Mr. Spock. They do not endure life’s bad bits with a stiff upper lip, or any other body part. “It’s not bad and there’s nothing to endure,” says Rob.

Stoics are not pessimists. They believe everything happens for a reason, the result of a thoroughly rational order. Unlike grumpy Schopenhauer, they believe we are living in the best of all possible worlds, the only possible world. Not only does the Stoic consider the glass half full; he finds it a miracle he has a glass at all—and isn’t it beautiful? He contemplates the demise of the glass, shattered into a hundred pieces, and appreciates it even more. He imagines life had he never owned the glass. He imagines a friend’s glass breaking and the consolation he’d offer. He shares his beautiful glass with others, for they, too, are part of the logos, or rational order.

“Joyful Stoic” is not an oxymoron, says William Irvine, a professor of philosophy at Wright State University and a practicing Stoic. He explains: “Our practice of Stoicism has made us susceptible to little outbursts of joy. We will, out of the blue, feel delighted to be the person we are, living the life we are living, in the universe we happen to inhabit.” I confess: that sounds appealing.

Stoics are not selfish. They help others—not out of sentimentality or pity but because it is rational to do so, the way fingers help the hand; and they are happy to endure discomfort and even pain while helping others.

Stoic altruism sometimes appears clinical, but it is exceptionally effective. I have a friend, Karen, who is a Stoic, though she doesn’t know it. I first met her in Jerusalem, where we were both working as journalists. There are a lot of stray cats in Jerusalem, more than in most places. It broke my heart to see these scruffy felines, with matted fur and open sores. I felt bad for them. That was the extent of my “helping.” I responded to their suffering by suffering myself, as if that somehow constituted a form of aid.

Not Karen. She sprang into action, scooping up a stray tabby here, a gimpy Oriental shorthair there. She fed them, and took them to a veterinary clinic. She found them homes. She did more than just emote.

Rob hands each of us a Stoic Camp workbook and a slim ancient text. More of a pamphlet, actually. Only eighteen pages. The Enchiridion, or Handbook. The teachings of the former Roman slave turned philosopher Epictetus. Stoicism distilled to its essence.

We turn to the first line on the first page, which Rob reads aloud: “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.” This strikes me as both extremely true and extremely obvious. Of course some things are up to us and some aren’t. I traveled two thousand miles for this?

But that single sentence expresses the essence of Stoicism. We live in an age where we’re told everything is up to us. If you’re not smarter or richer or thinner it’s because you’re not trying hard enough. If you get sick, it’s because of something you ate, or didn’t eat, or a medical test you failed to get, or did get, or an exercise you didn’t do, or overdid, or a vitamin you did or did not take. The message is clear: you are in control of your destiny. Are you, though? Where exactly does your sovereignty reside?

Not where you think, the Stoics reply. Most of what we consider under our control is not. Not wealth or fame or health. Not your success or the success of your children. Yes, you can exercise regularly, but you can also get hit by a bus on the way to the gym. You can eat only the healthiest foods, but that is no guarantee of longevity, either. You can put in fourteen-hour days at the office, but maybe your boss doesn’t like you and sabotages your career.

The Stoics have a word for these circumstances and achievements that lie beyond our control: “indifferents.” Their presence doesn’t add one iota to our character or our happiness. They are neither good nor bad. The Stoic, therefore, is “indifferent” to them. As Epictetus says: “Show me a man who though sick is happy, who though in danger is happy, who though dying is happy, and who though in disrepute is happy. Show him to me! By the gods, I would then see a Stoic!”

An enemy can harm your body but not you. As Gandhi, who had read the Stoics, said, “Nobody can hurt me without my permission.” Even the threat of torture at the hands of a tyrant needn’t rob you of tranquility and nobility, adds Epictetus. His teachings helped James Stockdale, an American pilot shot down over North Vietnam, endure seven long years of imprisonment and torture.

They helped Rob Colter, too. He was in New Zealand, looking forward to delivering a lecture, when he began to experience stomach pains. At first he dismissed the pain as a touch of tummy upset from the long journey. Soon, though, it grew worse, much worse. “The kind of pain that morphine doesn’t put a dent in,” Rob recalls. At the hospital, doctors diagnosed an obstructed bowel, a potentially life-threatening condition.

Amid the waves of pain, Rob managed to recall the words of Epictetus: “You are nothing to me.” He repeated that, over and over, addressing the waves of pain crashing into him. You are nothing to me. He felt better—not a lot better, but better. “My body is not under my control—any illusions of that were stripped away.”

Rob’s world shrank: the hospital room, the doctors and nurses. And his pain. Five tubes protruded from his body. He hadn’t bathed in six days. He faced a difficult surgery, one that might leave him dependent on a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. He made his choice the Stoic way, rationally. “If I don’t do this, I’m going to die, so let’s do it.”

The surgery was a success. No bag. His recovery was slow but steady. His insurance company sprang for a first-class seat for the flight home. The Stoics call this sort of bonbon a “preferred indifferent,” something nice to enjoy occasionally but not central to our happiness.

Looking back at the episode, Rob knows his Stoic attitude didn’t change the outcome, but it did change how he endured it. He suffered but he did not compound his suffering by wishing life were otherwise.

Epictetus was born a slave in AD 55 in what is today Turkey. His master, an advisor to Emperor Nero, beat him. Epictetus bore the mistreatment stoically. One day, the story goes, Epictetus’s owner began to torture him by twisting his leg. “If you keep that up, you’re going to break it,” said Epictetus calmly. The owner continued twisting Epictetus’s leg until it broke. “Didn’t I tell you it would break?” said Epictetus matter-of-factly. He was lame for the rest of his life.

Eventually freed from slavery, he moved to Rome, where he studied philosophy and soon gained a reputation as a dedicated and effective teacher. When, in AD 93, Emperor Domitian banished all philosophers from Rome, Epictetus moved to Nicopolis, a thriving coastal city in western Greece. There he attracted even more students, famous ones, like Hadrian, a future emperor, but mostly ordinary young men who traveled far to reach Nicopolis. Many were homesick. All were eager to learn.

Epictetus admired Socrates, and in many ways emulated him. Like Socrates, he lived simply, in a hut, with only a mattress as furniture. Like Socrates, Epictetus had no interest in metaphysics; his was a rigorously practical philosophy. Like Socrates, Epictetus valued ignorance as a necessary step on the road to true wisdom. Philosophy begins with “consciousness of our own weakness,” he said.

Much of life lies beyond our control, but we command what matters most: our opinions, impulses, desires, and aversions. Our mental and emotional life. We all possess Herculean strength, superhero powers, but it is the power to master our interior world. Do this, the Stoics say, and you will be “invincible.”

Too often we place our happiness in the hands of others: a tyrannical boss, a mercurial friend, our Instagram followers. Epictetus, the former slave, likens our predicament to self-imposed bondage. Only the man or woman who wants nothing is free.

Imagine, says Epictetus, you handed over your body to a stranger on the street. Absurd, right? Yet that’s what we do with our mind every day. We cede our sovereignty to others, allowing them to colonize our mind. We need to evict them. Now. It’s not so difficult. It is far easier to change ourselves than to change the world. This is one problem with trigger warnings, so prevalent on college campuses. They reinforce the presumption that college students are unable to control their reactions to potentially disturbing content. It disempowers them. It is not the Stoic way.

Think of an archer, says Cicero. He pulls the bow, as expertly as his abilities allow, but once released, exhales, knowing the arrow’s trajectory is no longer in his hands. As the Stoics say: “Do what you must; let happen what may.” We can inoculate ourselves against the bite of disappointment by switching from external to internal goals: not winning the tennis match but playing our best game; not seeing our novel published but writing the best, most honest one we are capable of writing. Nothing more, nothing less.

The fire has dwindled to hot ash, the coffee grown cold, but no one notices. We’re knee-deep into Stoicism and ready to dive deeper. One by one, we read the crisp entries from Epictetus’s Handbook. Some merit lengthy discussion, others a simple nod. Then we come across this line: “What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about things.” We sit there in silence, absorbing this two-thousand-year-old nugget, as obvious as it is profound.

The Stoics believe our emotions are the product of rational thought, but it is flawed thought. We can change the way we feel by changing the way we think. The Stoic aims not to feel nothing but to feel correctly. I realize that sounds odd. We don’t think of our emotions as either correct or incorrect. They just are. We have no control over them.

Not true, say the Stoics. Emotions don’t wash over us like waves on the beach. They happen for a reason. As the classicist A. A. Long explains, “We don’t typically get angry or jealous for no reason, but precisely because we think that someone is treating us badly or someone is achieving success that we, rather than he, deserves.” We are as responsible for our emotions as we are for our thoughts and actions. They are the result of judgments we make, and these judgments are often faulty. They are not misguided, or muddled, the Stoics say, but empirically wrong.

Imagine a traffic jam. Two drivers sit bumper-to-bumper. One is frazzled and angry, banging on the steering wheel and cursing. The other sits calmly, listening to NPR and recalling a meal of lobster ravioli he enjoyed recently. Clearly, the Stoics say, both drivers can’t be “right.” And they aren’t. The frazzled driver is incorrect, as incorrect as if he had concluded that two plus two equals three. To wish life is otherwise represents an egregious failure of reason.

Let’s examine how a faulty emotion is born. It starts with a reflexive reaction (called “pre-emotions” or “proto-passions”) to an external event (an “impression” in Stoic-speak). We stub our toe, then scream. We get stuck in traffic, then curse. This is natural. We are human after all. That initial shock is not an emotion but a reflex, like blushing when you’re embarrassed. It becomes an emotion when you “assent” to it, the Stoics say. When you assent, you elevate its status from reflex to passion.

All of this happens quickly, in a flash, but none of it happens without our permission. Every time we choose to honor, and amplify, these negative proto-passions we are choosing unhappiness. Why in the world, ask the Stoics, would you want to do that?

We must sever the link between impression and assent. This is where the Socratic pause—the “Mighty Pause,” I call it—comes in handy. Says Epictetus: “Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, ‘Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.’ ” Only when we realize our reaction to hardship is not automatic but a choice can we begin to make better choices.

But doesn’t everyone get upset when they’re stuck in traffic or stub their toe? No, they don’t, and, besides, says Rob, “Just because lots of people get upset when they stub their toes doesn’t mean you should, too.” We are always free to withhold assent. That is fully up to us.

If you must assent to these proto-passions, assent in a different direction, suggests Epictetus. Relabel them. If you’re alone, relabel your solitude as tranquility. If you are stuck in a crowd, relabel it a festival, “and so accept all contentedly.” Another mind trick? Sure, but a helpful one. Your mind is always playing tricks with reality anyway. Why not put those tricks to good use?

There’s a scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence, played by Peter O’Toole, calmly extinguishes a match between his thumb and forefinger.

A fellow officer tries it himself, and squeals in pain. “Ouch, it damn well hurts,” he says.

“Certainly it hurts,” replies Lawrence.

“Well, what’s the trick, then?”

“The trick,” says Lawrence, “is not minding that it hurts.”

Lawrence’s response was Stoic. Sure, he felt the pain, yet it remained a raw sensory sensation, a reflex. It never metastasized into a full-blown emotion. Lawrence didn’t mind the pain, in the literal sense of the word: he didn’t allow his mind to experience, and amplify, what his body had.

Stoic Camp is not merely a philosophy salon set in the Wyoming woods. It is a laboratory. We campers are the guinea pigs. A number of experiments are under way. Like this one: Take a middle-aged man, accustomed to certain creature comforts—including but not limited to pillows, blankets, single malt—and immerse him in a rustic cabin with fifteen malodorous grad students. Withhold bedding and single malt. Add continuous noise; season with bright fluorescent lights. Stir frequently. Freeze overnight.

It is in my nature to whine. It is in my name, too. I want to moan and groan and carp and kvetch and bellyache. I restrain myself, recalling an old Stoic maxim: “No good man laments, nor sighs, nor groans.” Complaining, Marcus reminds me, won’t lessen the pain and may exacerbate it. “Either way,” he says, “it is best not to complain.”

I look for a suggestion box—a suggestion, I decide, is technically not a complaint—but there is none. Of course. This is Stoic Camp. So I stop. I pause. Not a Mighty Pause, more a micro-pause, but I’ll take it. I slow down and ask: What aspects of this situation are up to me? Not the lack of heat or blankets. These are beyond my control. If I want a single malt, I could walk three miles into town. It’s my choice. The Scotch, as well as heat and blankets, are indifferents, even if they are ones I prefer. They are not under my control. Only my attitude, my assent or lack thereof, is. Epictetus uses the analogy of a dog tied to a cart. The cart is moving, and will continue to move no matter what. The dog has a choice: be dragged on the ground or trot alongside it. I need to start trotting.

Besides, I am engaging in what the Stoics call Voluntary Deprivation. (All right, not so voluntary in my case.) Seneca, among the wealthiest of Romans, recommended practicing poverty for a few days each month. Eat the “scantiest and cheapest fare” and wear “coarse and rough dress,” he advised. When Stoics practice Voluntary Deprivation they are, on one level, adhering to their maxim: “live in accord with nature.” Sweat when it’s hot, shiver when it’s cold, feel hunger pangs when famished. The goal of Voluntary Deprivation, though, is not pain but pleasure. By occasionally denying ourselves certain comforts, we appreciate them more, and lessen their hold on us.

Voluntary Deprivation teaches self-control, which has all sorts of benefits. Refrain from eating that piece of chocolate cake and you will feel good about yourself. Forgoing pleasure is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Voluntary Deprivation cultivates courage. It also inoculates us against future deprivation, which might not be voluntary. We experience a prick of pain now but much less later.

I realize I’ve been practicing a version of Voluntary Deprivation for years, though I’ve called it by another, cheerier, name: Intermittent Luxury. The habit began when I was a foreign correspondent for NPR. I made several reporting trips to Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein. Due to UN sanctions, flights were banned. That meant a long overland journey from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad.

I had a routine. I’d spend a few days in Amman, applying for an Iraqi visa and stocking up on provisions (chocolate, chemical suits, single malt). The Jordanian hotel was nice. Not the world’s best but nice. Good enough, as Epicurus would say. Once credentialed and supplied, I’d hire a driver for the twelve-hour journey across the Badia desert. My hotel in Baghdad, a creepy place called the Al-Rashid, was less nice. The rooms smelled of mildew and I suspect were bugged by Saddam’s agents.

When I returned to Amman several weeks later, the “nice enough” hotel felt like a palace. The bed was plusher, the food tastier—even the water pressure felt stronger. The hotel hadn’t changed. I had.

Years later, while living in Miami, I’d periodically switch off my car’s air conditioner, even during summer. Within seconds, the interior grew hot, my sweaty skin sticking to the leather seats of my VW. Yet I enjoyed it, for I had reminded myself what hot feels like and thus renewed my deep and abiding gratitude for Willis Carrier, inventor of the modern air conditioner. Voluntary Deprivation? I suppose, but I prefer to think of it as Intermittent Luxury—the unexpected upgrade to first class, the splurge at that restaurant everyone’s talking about, the hot shower after a weeklong camping trip.

So I decide to stop whining (internal whining is still whining) about the rough conditions. What had I expected from a place that contained the words “Stoic” and “Camp,” and in such proximity? Know what you’re getting into, Epictetus advised. If you’re going to the public bath, remember “there are people who splash, people who jostle, people who are insulting, people who steal.” Don’t be surprised if you get wet, or robbed. He’s right. Why should I be surprised that the accommodations at Stoic Camp are on par with a Baghdad hotel? It is not the lodging that must change but my attitude. Besides, the Stoics remind me, it can always get worse.

This brings us to another vaccine in the Stoic dispensary: premeditatio malorum, or “premeditation of adversity.” Anticipate the arrows of Fortune, says Seneca. Imagine the worst scenarios and “rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck.”

Imagining adversity is not the same as worrying about it, the Stoics say. Worrying is vague, inchoate. Premeditated adversity is specific—the more specific the better. Not “I imagine suffering a financial setback,” but “I imagine losing my house, car, my entire bag collection and am forced to move back in with my mother.” Oh, suggests Epictetus, helpfully, also imagine you’ve lost the ability to speak, hear, walk, breathe, and swallow.

By imagining the worst-case scenario we rob future hardships of their bite, and appreciate what we have. When catastrophe strikes, as it inevitably will, the Stoic is no more surprised than when a fig tree produces figs or a helmsman encounters a headwind, says Epictetus. Adversity anticipated is adversity diminished. Fears articulated are fears lessened. That, at least, is the theory.

My daughter isn’t so sure. When I tell her about the Stoic notion of premeditated adversity, she declares it “stupid,” possibly even stupider than Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. Not only is contemplating adversity depressing, she says, but it’s unnecessary. “You already worry about bad stuff happening anyway. Why would you force yourself to do it more?” She has a point. Then again, she’s only thirteen years old, not exactly the target demographic of Stoicism, the philosophy of hard knocks. Give her time, I tell myself.

By the third day of Stoic Camp, we fall into a routine. We devote mornings to Epictetus and his Handbook. In the afternoons, we break into smaller groups and discuss Marcus Aurelius. The grad students struggle with the philosopher-emperor. He’s too squishy. There’s nothing to grab on to, nothing to dissect. Marcus isn’t trying to prove or disprove anything. He is not postulating. He is a man wrestling out loud with endemic self-doubt, working out what it means to be a human being.

We’re isolated out here. There are no distractions. No television. No Wi-Fi. A weak and irregular cell phone signal. Yet a quiet joy prevails. Partly it is the joy of kindred spirits, joining forces against the elements, but it is also the rare joy of humans grappling aloud with weighty, urgent questions. This, I imagine, is how Epictetus’s students must have felt, far from home, with only each other and their philosophy.

We Stoics bond. We roast marshmallows over a fire, braving the cold stoically. We make goofy Stoic jokes. A typical exchange goes like this:

“Hey, I’m going into town to buy a six-pack of preferred indifferents. Anyone want anything?”

“No thanks. I’m practicing Voluntary Deprivation.”

“Okay. I’ll be back soon. Fate permitting.”

That last phrase, “fate permitting,” expresses something called the “Stoic reserve clause.” When Rob first mentioned it, I worried it was some legal mumbo jumbo—a disclaimer to sign, perhaps—but my fears were misplaced. The reserve clause is not legal but therapeutic. Another Stoic technique for coping with life’s uncertainty.

At the heart of Stoicism lies a deep fatalism. The universe follows a script not written by you. And as much as you aspire to one day direct, forget about it. You are an actor. Embrace your role. “Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan,” says Epictetus.

Pining for a different role is futile and will only cause you to suffer needlessly, like the dog dragged by the cart. We must learn, say the Stoics, “to desire what we have.” That sounds odd, I realize. Isn’t desire, by definition, a yearning for something we lack? How can we desire what we already have? Nietzsche, I think, answers the question best. Don’t resign yourself to your fate. Don’t accept your fate. Love it. Desire it.

The “reserve clause” serves as a reminder that we are following a script we haven’t written. Events unfold, “fate permitting.” If a Stoic is about to board a train for Chicago, she says to herself, “I’ll be in Chicago tomorrow morning, fate permitting.” If she is up for a promotion, she tells herself she will get it, fate permitting. The reserve clause is similar to the Muslim inshallah (God willing) or the Jewish b’ezrat hashem, only stripped of theology.

Not everyone at camp is buying Stoic determinism. The grad students, rigorous logic-choppers, are particularly skeptical. If everything is fated, where does that leave human agency? Why bother doing anything? Why get out of bed in the morning? I share these concerns and notice Rob is busy stroking his goatee. I’m eager to hear his rebuttal.

It comes in the form of an analogy. (The Stoics love analogies.) People are like cylinders rolling down a hill, he says, eyes twinkling. All of the cylinders are going to reach the bottom of the hill. That is a given. Whether they have a rough or smooth journey, though, is up to them. Are they polished, perfectly shaped cylinders or rough and uneven ones? In other words, are they virtuous cylinders? We don’t control the hill or the force of gravity, but we do control the kind of cylinder we are, and that matters.

My bunk is shaking. Violently. In my half sleep, I think, Earthquake!—an adversity I had not premeditated and now wish I had. No, not an earthquake. The shaking is too methodical, possibly human induced.

“Time to live in accord with nature,” a voice says. I open my eyes and glance at my watch: 5:00 a.m. What is going on?

Oh yeah, good old Marcus. He had waxed poetic about waking at dawn to watch the stars and greet the sun. “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, see yourself running with them.” Marcus, I’m fairly certain, never woke at dawn, never ran with a single star, yet Rob has taken the philosopher-emperor at his word and decided that waking before sunrise is just the bracing tonic we aspiring Stoics need.

I stumble to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, then join my fellow campers. I scramble up a hill, nearly tripping several times, all the while shivering. I had packed for spring in Maryland, not Wyoming.

Our predawn maneuver does have some rational basis. There was a physicality to Stoic philosophy. The school’s founder, Zeno, was famously fit, no doubt a result of all that vigorous pacing in the colonnade. His successor, Cleanthes, was an ex-boxer and his successor, Chrysippus, a long-distance runner. The goal of all this athleticism wasn’t to win medals or even gain fitness. It was, like everything else with the Stoics, a way to practice virtue—specifically the virtues of self-discipline, courage, and endurance.

The wind cuts through me. I am whining. Externally. There are only three of us climbing the hill. Where are the others? I wonder.

Then I spot them, already positioned on the ridge. “Hey,” I say to Rob, “what happened to ‘No Stoic Left Behind’?”

“There’s nothing in the Handbook about that,” he deadpans.

I switch tack and ask him what Marcus would say about this biting cold.

“He’d say, ‘Man up,’ ” Rob replies.

Stoicism is demanding. It’s not easy and they don’t pretend it is. It contains little of that Greek moderation. It is an all-or-nothing philosophy. One is either virtuous or one is not. One either lives in accord with nature or one does not.

Like the Epicureans, Stoics saw philosophy as medicine for the soul. Tough medicine. At one point, Epictetus compares the philosopher’s school to the physician’s office, adding that “you shouldn’t leave it in pleasure but in pain.” The goal, he adds, is not dependency on the physician but to heal yourself, to become your own physician.

This emphasis on self-reliance helps explain why Stoicism appealed to America’s Founding Fathers, and to soldiers everywhere today. It locates responsibility for your happiness squarely on your own shoulders. When a young student complains of a runny nose, Epictetus replies: “Have you no hands? Wipe your own nose, then, and don’t blame God.”

We each possess a bit of the logos, a divine intelligence that infuses the universe, the Stoics say. Reason is our greatest blessing, the only true source of happiness. The cosmos is infused with a divine but wholly rational intelligence. Every time we act rationally, we shake hands with this intelligence. For the Stoics, acting “rationally” doesn’t mean acting like a cold fish. To act rationally is to act in harmony with the cosmos, and there is nothing cold about that. “We are agents of divine providence,” says Rob, and I can tell he means it.

So, to live in accord with nature is to align yourself with the kingdom of reason, and you can do that anywhere. “You can just as easily be in accord with nature in Manhattan,” says Rob, making me wonder what I’m doing in the wilds of Wyoming, underdressed, in pitch-darkness.

Then the sky lightens, as the sun peeks above the horizon, and it is beautiful and I forget about the cold and the rough lodging and no longer wonder why I am here. As I gaze at the brightening sky, something Rob had said earlier comes to mind: “The world’s a pretty big place and I’m not.”

He was articulating the Stoic notion of “the View from Above.” Imagine yourself hovering high above the earth, looking down at your puny world: the inconsequential traffic and dirty dishes and petty arguments and lost notebooks. Indifferents, all of them. You are nothing. You are everything.

Another word for adversity is loss, and here the Stoics have much to say. I’m glad. I could use some help in that department. Epictetus suggests coping with small losses and moving to bigger ones. Have you lost your coat? Well, yes, that’s because you had a coat.

Only, in the Stoic worldview you haven’t actually lost the coat. You’ve returned it. You should no more be traumatized than when you return a library book or check out of a hotel. My beloved notebook I took to England? Not lost. Returned. As Epictetus says, “And when something is removed, to give it up easily and immediately, grateful for the times you had the use of it—unless you would rather cry for your nurse and your mummy!” Man up.

Too often we confuse what is ours and what is not. There’s no need for this confusion, say the Stoics. It’s simple. Nothing is ours, not even our bodies. We always rent, never own. This is liberating. If there is nothing to lose there is nothing to fear losing.

I lost a hat recently. I had just purchased it a few days earlier, and took the loss hard. When I mentioned this to my daughter, I decided to fully articulate my reaction: “That hat made me happy, so when I lost it I lost my happiness.” Spoken aloud it sounded childish and absurd. I didn’t lose the hat, I returned it, and, besides, it was a mere indifferent.

Like the Japanese, the Stoics know “all things everywhere are perishable.” They see this fact as cause for neither sadness, like many of us, nor celebration, like the Japanese, but merely a fact of life. Rationally there is nothing we can do about it, so best not to worry. Marcus reminds us that all we cherish will one day disappear like leaves on a tree so we must “beware lest delight in them leads you to cherish them so dearly that their loss would destroy your peace of mind.”

What about bigger losses? Surely there is none greater than the death of a loved one. Grief is natural and the Stoics encourage it, right? Wrong. The Stoics acknowledge the need for some grieving, but not much. “Let your tears flow, but let them also cease,” wrote Seneca to a friend who had lost a loved one. Another time, he admonished a woman for letting grief for her dead son rob her of time better spent with grandchildren. When greeted with the news of the death of a child, the proper response, Stoics say, is: “I was already aware that I had begotten a mortal.”

Here the Stoics lose me. By suppressing our grief, aren’t we suppressing our joy, too? Shouldn’t we open ourselves to the full spectrum of our humanity, including grief?

I suspect Rob struggles with this aspect of Stoicism, too, a suspicion confirmed when, toward the end of Stoic Camp, he tells us a story. The fireplace is going full tilt. Outside, it has turned cold and cloudy. Snow is coming.

Rob’s daughter had her ears pierced at a young age, and added several piercings later. One time, though, when she was thirteen years old, the bleeding wouldn’t stop. They took her to the family doctor and discovered “the blood counts were all wrong.” More tests. Then the bad news. Rob’s daughter had a rare disease called aplastic anemia. Her bone marrow had stopped producing platelets, cells that clump together to help blood clot.

It is an extremely difficult disease to treat. “Cancer is easy compared to this,” one doctor told Rob. They watched a friend who had the disease die. Rob googled life expectancy for those with the disease: sixteen years.

“So,” Rob continues, his voice calm and steady, “for me this is the value of Stoicism, where the rubber hits the road. I’ll be honest. It’s hard. It’s hard to say of my daughter, ‘You are only an appearance,’ but I have to do this.” Rob asked himself the Stoic question: What part of this situation is up to me? His answer: Be the best father you can. “All of the analyses and proofs don’t matter for shit if I can’t be a better father. What does that mean? It means I get to be the one who drives her to the hospital and I get to be the one who gets her meds. It means I get to be the one who does not freak out.” Being a Stoic makes Rob a more useful father, a better father, and, though the Stoics seldom use this word, a more loving father.

On the last day of Stoic Camp, I wake to driving snow. Several inches have fallen, and more is on the way. Snow. In late May. Nature doesn’t seem to be in accord with Herself, but what do I know?

I do know the road to Denver is closed, and I have a flight to Paris to catch. People are worried, and by people I mean me. Rob suggests calm.

“I wish there was an app for that,” I say.

“There is,” he replies. “It’s in your hand.”

“My iPhone?”

“No, your other hand. The Handbook. Epictetus.”

Of course. Haven’t I learned anything at Stoic Camp? All these grand ideas about withholding assent and reserve clauses and premeditated adversity evaporate when I confront actual adversity. Not much adversity, either. My disrupted travel is nothing compared to Rob’s health scare in New Zealand, or his daughter’s illness.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and imagine the View from Above. This vantage helps a bit, but not much: in my mind’s eye I see the airliner flying to Paris without me.

I turn to Seneca, who promptly pisses all over my immediate predicament—as well as my life’s work: therapeutic travel. “Do you suppose that wisdom, the greatest of all skills, can be assembled on a journey? Believe me, there is no journey that could deposit you beyond outbursts of temper, beyond your fears.” Roman bastard.

I turn to Epictetus, who is more encouraging. He sees the traveler as an “intelligent cosmic spectator.” Much better. He offers no direct advice about snowstorms in May, so I improvise. What in this situation is under my control? Not the snow or the closed roads or, for that matter, my philosophical journey. I am too attached to all of it. I am, Epictetus says, like those travelers who find a nice hotel and never want to leave. “Have you forgotten your intention, man? You were not traveling to this place, but only through it.”

My anxiety, I realize, is a reaction to perceived loss. I will lose my flight and therefore lose time and therefore lose… what?

I’m not sure. I had not thought through the ramifications. Now that I have, I realize how little is actually at stake. My flight is an indifferent. My happiness does not depend on it. Not one iota. I have no claim to it. It is not mine to lose. I am a temporary tenant here, just passing through. Besides, whether I make it to Paris or not is beyond my control. If the road is closed, it is closed.

Some relabeling is in order, I decide. I relabel my predicament a mini-vacation, a chance to spend more time with my fellow Stoics. Paris has been there for many centuries. It can wait a while longer. The snow won’t last forever; nothing does. Soon it will stop and I’ll be driving south, past the Snowy Range, under the big Wyoming sky, on my way to Denver International and eventually the bright lights of Paris. Yes, I will be there soon enough. Fate permitting.