Written by: Sergeant Steve Sweeting
In my travels and experiences teaching Stoicism to LEOs, I have all kinds of conversations with many different people. I engage with everyone and try to listen to all points of view. I often value the critics because they challenge me and my ideas. They help me refine my thinking and sharpen it to a fine point. That’s where today’s newsletter starts: a conversation with a critic.
I was speaking with a Ph.D. (psychologist and researcher) who works with LEOs. She had no idea who I was, so during our conversation I mentioned that I write and teach about Stoic philosophy, mainly sharing it with my community of LEOs. She quickly announced she’d “looked into Stoicism” and found a “fatal flaw” in the philosophy… “GASP!” I took a Stoic mental pause and said, “Tell me more about that.” She had determined that Stoicism was completely devoid of hope, something she said she relies upon daily and something she couldn’t live without. She had obviously made up her mind, but in that objection to Stoic philosophy, she had given me something to think about.
So, I’ve been thinking about it and coming back to it time and time again until I’ve found some clarity and decided what I want to say about the idea of hope.
Fast forward to recent events. My beautiful new niece and goddaughter was just born a few days ago. I can already tell that she and I are going to be great friends. Her parents kept the name a secret until after she was born. Her name is Hope.
Being a proud uncle and a freshly minted godfather, I started thinking: What can I do? What presents can I buy? What can I do to help? What needs can I help meet for the tired parents? One thing I thought would be cool is to go buy some newspapers from the day of her birth. My plan: throw them in my safe for 18 years, then in 2043 on her 18th birthday, we will have a cool present to give her. At that point I’ll probably have to explain what newspapers are.
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So my wife and I made a late night trip to the store and hit the newspaper rack. The irony punched me in the face. Here we are buying presents for 18 years from now, for a precious little baby named Hope, and the newspaper headlines inspire anything but hope. Absolutely horrible news, disaster, outrage, war, death, and so much more. You look at the news in black and white and wonder: what kind of world will this baby grow up in? Will we even last another 18 years?
Is there any hope for Hope?
I started reaching for my Stoic mental tool belt in this moment, and the question posed by our Ph.D. friend suddenly went from philosophical abstract to practical reality in my mind. Where in this set of tools and tactics do I find a way to have hope for the future?
After a quick mental pat down, I started breathing easy. I still felt optimistic about the future, confident that in 18 years I’ll be handing her these newspapers and explaining how they used to print information on slices of dead trees. I have hope, I feel quite a bit of it, but where is it coming from?
I think the Stoic practice of examining impressions and challenging perceptions is a means for developing hope. Weighing that against my experience, I’ve lived through 9/11, too many hurricanes to count, people have tried to kill me, the worst era in the history of law enforcement, turmoil, upheaval, the birth of the home computer, the birth of the internet, the rise of AI, and so much more. Yet here I am, comfortable and happy, sitting in my bed writing about hope.
“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent. No one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.“
— Seneca
I think the Dichotomy of Control, developing strength, and building resiliency all come together to create a worldview that is very hopeful. Will there be hard times in the future? Yes, absolutely. Am I prepared for that future? Yes, absolutely. I have confidence that the future will work out and that I’ll handle whatever form that future takes. It feels like hope to me.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
— Marcus Aurelius
For my more advanced philosophical readers: if you just google “Stoic quotes about hope,” you will probably get a lot of quotes that sound like Stoicism teaches against having hope. Quotes like this:
“Hecato says, ‘cease to hope and you will cease to fear.’… The two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to.”
— Seneca
But examine what Seneca is saying and you might just come away with a different understanding. He is saying that hope and fear are linked and connected. For example: When we say that we “hope” that something doesn’t happen, we are expressing a fear of something. Or when we say we “hope” things turn around or get better, we are saying that a bad thing or something fearful has happened and we “hope” that it changes.
But what if you took fear out of the equation? What if you pulled out the handcuff key and unshackled hope from fear? What if you feared nothing and were confident in your ability to handle all outcomes? What if you had the absolute belief that things would turn out fine? How would we describe a person like that? I think we would say that they are an incredibly hopeful person. How would it feel not to have fear about the future? I think you would find it hard to distinguish that lack of fear from an abundance of hope.
So where in Stoicism does it say that it is a Virtue to be hopeful? I think just below the surface it is baked in and part of the Stoic DNA. It is right there in the four cardinal Virtues: Courage. The ability to overcome fear. Defeating fear rewards you with a whole lot of hope.
One last thing: There is a finer point to be made here. I still ride around with a large Velcro patch on my car carrier, and on a solid black background in large bold white letters it says “Hope is not a good plan.” I stand by that. Hope is not a good plan; it is not a valid strategy; it’s not a tactic that serves you. I could easily design more patches that express similar truths.
- Wishing is not a good plan
- Happiness is not a good plan
- Comfort is not a good plan
- Anger is not a good plan
- Knowing the right people is not a good plan
- Optics is not a good plan
I am no more “anti-hope” than Seneca was, but I understand the nuance of it. Good leaders inspire hope; they give hope; they do not rely on hope as a strategy. Hope is a good, positive feeling. Hope is a reward for courage, not something that replaces the need for it.
Amor Fati
– Sgt. Steve
