Recently, I was ill, and I found myself becoming depressed because of it. The illness itself was unpleasant, but what affected me just as much was everything it prevented me from doing. I could not go out as much, participate in many of the things I normally enjoyed, or live with the same freedom I was used to. As those pleasures disappeared, my spirits went down with them.
So I turned to the ancient Stoics to see what they had to say about illness, because the Stoics basically invented "copemaxxing" - which is apparently a word now. I came across a letter in which Seneca writes about his own experience of being sick and what philosophy taught him during it.
He begins by acknowledging the importance of friends. When he was ill, his friends tended to him, and their devotion gave him comfort. Friendship does more than provide practical help when someone is sick. The presence of people who care about you can lift your spirits and even diminish the fear and dread that accompany illness. There is something reassuring about knowing that suffering does not have to be endured entirely alone.
Seneca then identifies three things that make illness frightening: the fear of death, physical suffering, and the interruption of our pleasures.
I will leave aside the fear of death, since the Stoics have much more to say about that subject. What interested me were the latter two problems: how should we think about physical pain, and what should we do when illness prevents us from enjoying life in the way we normally do?
On physical suffering, Seneca's reasoning is surprisingly simple. Pain is either temporary and will pass, chronic and something the body gradually learns to live with, or so extreme that consciousness itself eventually gives way. So instead of fearing pain in advance, we should deal with the form of pain that is actually in front of us. If it will pass, remind yourself that it will pass. If it persists, learn to live around it and make the most of the periods when it recedes. If it becomes truly intolerable, there is a limit to how long you can consciously experience it.
The larger point is that pain does not deserve the enormous fear we often give it.
Chronic pain can also change our relationship with the moments in which we are free from it. If pain arrives in bouts, the stretches between them become more valuable. Ordinary comfort, which we might previously have ignored, suddenly becomes something to appreciate. In that sense, suffering can make the absence of suffering more vivid. This reminds me of Nietzsche's idea of amor fati: loving one's fate and making the most of whatever life gives you. Instead of spending the periods without pain fearing its return, you can enjoy them more intensely because you know what their opposite feels like. Seneca does not argue that we should merely wait passively for suffering to end.
He also believes that illness gives us an opportunity to exercise courage. There is little use in endlessly complaining about one's health. What matters is how we respond to it. Seneca compares this attitude to the courage of a gladiator. We usually imagine courage as something displayed on a battlefield or in some dramatic moment of danger. But courage does not need a battlefield. It can be displayed while lying sick in bed.
Character is revealed in how we respond to adversity wherever we encounter it. Someone suffering from illness can still fight by doing everything within his power, enduring what has to be endured, and refusing to let physical weakness become weakness of spirit. The body may be struggling, but that does not mean the person has to surrender with it.
The second problem Seneca identifies is the interruption of our pleasures. This was the part that spoke most directly to my own experience. Much of what had been depressing me was not simply pain. It was the feeling that illness had taken life away from me. I could not participate in many of the activities I enjoyed, and because those pleasures disappeared, it felt as though enjoyment itself had disappeared.
But Seneca makes an important distinction: illness may take away some of the pleasures of the body, but it does not necessarily take away the pleasures of the mind.
That distinction changes the problem completely.
Even if the body is suffering or confined, the mind does not have to be confined in the same way. The physical pleasures available to us may shrink, but the inner life can remain active. We can still think, read, observe, reflect, and take pleasure in what the mind encounters. Seneca describes this kind of pleasure as taking in the variety, majesty, and sublimity of the things around us. As long as we remain attentive to these things, illness cannot completely impoverish our experience of life. There is still something available to the mind even when many of the pleasures of the senses have temporarily disappeared.
So Seneca's response to illness is not merely to endure it. Friends help us carry it. Pain can be understood rather than feared. Courage can be practiced even from a sickbed. And when the pleasures of the body are interrupted, the pleasures of the mind remain available to us.