Posted byBill Irvine

(Author ofGuide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy)

On Saturday, September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike slammed into Texas. Since I live in Ohio, my interest in this event can best be described as passing--those who live near the coast, I reflected, have to expect this sort of thing. But then events took a surprising turn.
On Sunday afternoon, the remnants of Ike caused a severe windstorm in my part of the world. The wind was not of hurricane force, and unlike in Texas, it wasn't accompanied by rain. It was nevertheless sufficient to cause trees to snap and roof shingles to fly. At about 4:30 in the afternoon, the power went out.
At first I assumed that it would be a few hours before power was restored, but by the next evening, my optimism had waned. As I lay in my dark bedroom, studying the dust motes caught in the beam of my flashlight, I found myself turning to philosophy for consolation.
For the last several years, I have been studying the philosophy of the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics. As a result of doing this, I started putting Stoic advice to work in my own life, and before long, I realized that I had, much to my surprise, become a practicing Stoic.
按照斯多葛学派的说法，任何希望拥有美好生活的人，都会周期性地远离他们所珍视的东西。特别是，如果我们富裕，我们应该“实践贫穷”——我们应该，也就是说，我们应该像贫穷一样生活一段时间。例如，即使有美味的食物，我们也可能只吃简单的饭菜;即使我们拥有一个昂贵的衣橱，我们也可能坚持穿着简单。
Why engage in this seemingly masochistic exercise? Because by doing this, said the Stoics, we can dramatically increase our happiness.
哲学家、神学家和心理学家都认为，幸福生活的关键之一就是说服自己去追求我们已经拥有的东西。不幸的是，我们人类倾向于把我们所拥有的一切视为理所当然，相反，我们的幸福取决于我们所没有的东西的获得。当然，问题在于，谁也不能保证我们能够获得这些东西，即使我们获得了它们，我们很快就会发现自己把它们视为理所当然，因此最终并不会比以前更幸福。
然而，我们如何才能说服自己想要我们已经拥有的东西呢?斯多葛学派认为他们找到了这个问题的答案:我们应该定期花时间思考我们珍视的东西会失去，或者更好的是，一段没有它们的日子也过下去。这无疑是一个好建议;问题是，要遵循它需要付出努力。毕竟，有龙虾的时候，谁还会想吃通心粉和奶酪呢?
A power outage, though, forces us to do what, according to the Stoics, we should have been doing of our own free will--namely, practicing poverty. Because of the power outage, my neighbors and I found ourselves deprived of television and the Internet, light to read by, and warm showers. The experience made me more appreciative of all these things, but as a practicing Stoic, I expected this to happen. What I found striking is that it seemed to have the same effect on my neighbors.
Some of them whined about their predicament, but many more seemed to take it in stride. Indeed, this mini-crisis seemed to infuse them with life. I encountered these newly-minted Stoics in restaurants, in the supermarket, and out taking walks in our darkened neighborhood. After offering stories on how the outage was affecting them, they would often comment on how things could have been worse: "At least we still have water." It brought to mind interviews of tornado survivors who, standing in front of the ruins of their home and surrounded by family members, declare that they still have everything that really matters. (It says something about the human condition, by the way, that it takes a tornado to make us aware of what really matters.)
After a week, our power was restored, and those who experienced the Great Power Outage of 2008 started to forget whatever lessons they learned while sitting in darkness. It was precisely for this reason that the Stoic philosopher Seneca advocated that we supplement the hard times the world inflicts on us with “artificial” hard times that we periodically bring on ourselves, by practicing poverty. He also thought that we should engage in"bedtime meditations": as we lie in bed waiting for sleep to come, we should think about how much we would miss our spouse, our home, our job, and the other things we value if we suddenly lost them.
Practicing poverty and meditating in this fashion are not, to be sure, as dramatic as living through a power outage. They are nevertheless an effective way to convince ourselves to embrace whatever life we find ourselves living.