My happiness seems to me no more attached to what I earn (once past that watershed point of not having money troubles) than it does to my wallpaper. And I know more than my fair share of wealthy people and they’ll tell you the same. Is this thing that’s upsetting me something which lies under my control? If not, what if I were to decide it’s fine and let it go?

From his walled garden cut off from the city, Epicurus introduced us to the revelatory notion that to become happier, we need to reassess our attachments to things in the world. We need to feel differently about things that cause (or have the potential to cause) anxiety. We wish to live with as little pain and worry as possible. Epicurus has, in his way, discovered our unconscious mind and knows that we must change our emotional experiences; a purely intellectual, Aristotelian approach won’t affect us deeply enough to make the changes we need. Of course it is harder to get excited about a future event if we keep reminding ourselves it might not happen. We’re so indoctrinated against the idea of pessimism that it might seem as if we are actively denying ourselves a source of happiness through this exceptio. But consider the alternative. When we become very excited about a future event, we forget the present and place ourselves in the future. We are at the mercy of something outside of our control: whether or not the event happens as we would wish. It may turn out to be better than expected, or roughly the same, or worse. The more excited we are, the more likely it is to fail to meet our expectations, in the same way that something we dread is likely to not be half as bad as we feared. Someone you know exhibits some behaviour that deeply irritates you. Now we have a way of dealing with it: we can identify that it isn’t within our control and tell ourselves it’s fine and none of our business. Even if that instruction it’s fine takes a while to truly make itself felt in our bones, we have a clear target that we are aiming for. We should not exacerbate things by ruminating on their behaviour or, for that matter, tell others how much they annoy us because they are always like that. We need to let that feeling of it’s fine sink in. Depending on the depth of our annoyance, we may not feel the calming flood of its cool waters immediately, but we can make sure their path is kept as free from obstruction as possible. It is only when we stop projecting our needs – which first means becoming conscious of them as needs – that we can release the other person from the tyranny of our expectations.SO WE ARE to take responsibility for the ways in which we respond to external events. It is those judgements that cause us problems, at least beyond the first flush of anxiety that a sudden danger may trigger, rather than the events themselves. If we avoid these ‘disturbances’ by not allowing events to upset our emotional life, then we might achieve the Stoic ideal, which is to live in the glow of a psychological fortitude that they called virtue. Our Level of Control But we have, by absorbing the crux of Epictetus’s teaching (that it is not events that cause our problems but our appraisal of them), already made the biggest and most important leap. By fully accepting the fact that we are responsible for our angry responses (and not those who anger us), we are crossing the wide river to more tranquil pastures, from which it is very difficult to return. Holding On To Anger I am responsible for how I feel about external events. What am I doing to give myself this feeling? Thus we might be terrific listeners with a disarming honesty that makes most people feel very comfortable in our company, while we ourselves are convinced we are merely awkward misfits, unable to play the kinds of social games everyone else seems to enjoy.

Epicurus might have introduced it, but it was the Stoics who really embraced and developed this notion that emotions spring from rationally based judgements. If we were the last person on Earth, we wouldn’t bother with buffetless ventilators or ironic iPhone cases. When the desire to impress others is removed, we live a more authentically Epicurean existence. And again, we should not make the mistake of thinking that Epicurus would deny us such things as a fancy fan. Instead, he would have us not cultivate the need for such things in the first place, so that the pain of losing them when they are broken, lost or stolen would not compromise any enjoyment we might obtain from them in the meantime. It seems so self-evidently preferable to enjoy your work, and to draw a sense of meaning from it, that it sounds bizarre to question the idea. Alan Watts, who gave us the image of trying to wrap up water with string, made the point that it is absurd to work at something you don’t enjoy, purely to make more money to be able to live longer and continue doing something you don’t… Is it so simple? At first glance it seems a dangerous recipe for repressing painful feelings. Just tell yourself you’re fine and the pain will disappear? This does not tally with our modern preoccupation with expressing our negative emotions. If we are angry, we should talk about it or ‘take it out’ in some harmless way such as pillow-beating; certainly we shouldn’t seek to pretend we feel fine.

When things irritate us, or when we feel as if the universe is conspiring against us, we would do well to remember that we are better off seeing those irritants as the strewn shavings on the carpenter’s floor and accepting that they are a natural by-product of a greater thing at work. There will always be people and events that get in the way of our plans. Thus we should not get too attached to our ambitions and realise that our tiny aims are an insignificant part of the myriad of plans, thwarted and realised, that make up the grand scheme of fortune as it continues to unravel itself.