The Socrates Express

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.