Free of Hope and Fear
This week you are learning about being "free of hope and fear," a state the Stoics sometimes called apatheia (in Greek, "a-PATH-ee-ah"), which simply means freedom from the disruptive passions that jerk us around. Hope and fear are a matched pair: both are the mind running ahead of the present moment, grasping at what might go well or bracing against what might go badly. Neither is happening right now, yet both can consume your entire day. The Stoics did not want you to become cold or indifferent; they wanted you to stop being a hostage to events that exist only in your imagination.
Passage
But fear borders upon grief, of which I have already said enough; but I must say a little more on that. Now, as grief proceeds from what is present, so does fear from future evil; so that some have said that fear is a certain part of grief: others have called fear the harbinger of trouble, which, as it were, introduces the ensuing evil. Now, the reasons that make what is present supportable, make what is to come very contemptible; for, with regard to both, we should take care to do nothing low or grovelling, soft or effeminate, mean or abject. But, notwithstanding we should speak of the inconstancy, imbecility, and levity of fear itself, yet it is of very great service to speak contemptuously of those very things of which we are afraid. So that it fell out very well, whether it was by accident or design, that I disputed the first and second day on death and pain - the two things that are the most dreaded: now, if what I then said was approved of, we are in a great degree freed from fear. And this is sufficient, as far as regards the opinion of evils. [31.]
— Cicero, Tusculans 4.64
Reflection
Cicero adds a structural insight: fear and grief share the same architecture. Grief looks at what is already lost; fear looks at what might be lost next. They are the same wound at different points in time. His practical prescription is to look clearly and honestly at the things you fear rather than away from them, because the things we build up in imagination almost always shrink when examined directly. He also points to the earlier work of confronting death and pain as sources of this freedom. This is not bravado; it is the recognition that much of our fear feeds on vagueness, and that clear seeing is its own kind of courage.
Go deeper
What is one fear you tend to look away from rather than examine, and what do you think you might find if you turned toward it with honest attention?
Practice
Clear Seeing
Choose one thing you are genuinely afraid of, something you usually avoid thinking about directly. Give yourself five minutes to write about it as specifically and concretely as possible: what exactly would happen, what the realistic timeline would be, what you would actually do in response. Notice whether the fear grows or shrinks when you describe it in plain, specific terms rather than leaving it as a vague shadow.