You 2.0: The Wisdom of Stoicism

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantham. To be human, to be alive, is to be vulnerable to sadness and suffering. For centuries, artists, writers, and thinkers have tried to capture what this feels like. The author William Styron once said, The great drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. but it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb.

It may be more accurate to say that despair comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. Sometimes our suffering is connected to what we see in the world. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, who was already prone to depression, was often consumed by the horrors of the war.

His secretary, John Hay, would note that He would sit for hours, staring vacantly out the window, his face displaying the deepest sorrow imaginable. But as long as humans have been suffering, humans have also been trying to find paths out of suffering. Philosophers, scientists, and spiritual leaders Have offered many ideas on how to live a life of contentment.

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