Askesis — Voluntary Hardship
This week's concept is askesis (the Greek word, pronounced "ah-SKEH-sis"), which simply means voluntary hardship: the practice of deliberately choosing difficulty in order to build the character and strength that fortune cannot give you and cannot easily take away. It is not self-punishment or performance; it is training, the same way an athlete trains, except the goal is a well-ordered soul rather than a stronger body. By the end of this week you will understand what askesis is, why the Stoics thought it was non-negotiable, and how to weave it into ordinary days without turning your life into a monastery.
Passage
For what else is it that we do, when we call off our minds from pleasure, that is to say, from our attention to the body, from the managing our domestic estate, which is a sort of handmaid and servant of the body, or from duties of a public nature, or from all other serious business whatever? What else is it, I say, that we do, but invite the soul to reflect on itself? oblige it to converse with itself, and, as far as possible, break off its acquaintance with the body? Now to separate the soul from the body, is to learn to die, and nothing else whatever. Wherefore take my advice; and let us meditate on this, and separate ourselves as far as possible from the body, that is to say, let us accustom ourselves to die. This will be enjoying a life like that of heaven even while we remain on earth; and when we are carried thither and released from these bonds, our souls will make their progress with more rapidity: for the spirit which has always been fettered by the bonds of the body, even when it is disengaged, advances more slowly, just as those do who have worn actual fetters for many years: but when we have arrived at this emancipation from the bonds of the body, then indeed we shall begin to live, for this present life is really death, which I could say a good deal in lamentation for if I chose. A.
— Cicero, Tusculans 1.75
Reflection
Cicero takes askesis somewhere the previous passages have been moving toward but have not yet named directly: practicing withdrawal from the body is, he says, learning to die. This sounds dramatic, but his point is precise. Every time you pull your attention away from bodily comfort, social noise, and external business and turn the soul inward to examine itself, you are rehearsing the one transition that is genuinely universal. Voluntary hardship, in this reading, is not only training for misfortune; it is training for the deepest fact of human existence. The soul that has practiced self-sufficiency throughout life will not be ambushed by its own finitude.
Go deeper
When you imagine the end of your life, what habit of mind or character do you most want to have built by then, and does your current daily practice actually move you toward that?
Practice
Brief Meditation on Enough
Find ten minutes of quiet. Sit without your phone, without music, without anything to read. For the first five minutes simply notice what the body and mind reach for. For the last five minutes ask yourself: if today were a complete life in miniature, what would have been enough? Write one sentence at the end.