How Stoics Solved The "Grass is Always Greener" Problem.
Maybe We're Deluded, and There's A Better Way
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Plutarch wrote that, “The wealthy envy the learned, the famous the rich, advocates the sophists, and, by heaven, free men and patricians regard with wondering admiration and envy successful comedians in the theater and dancers and servants in the courts of kings.”
Plutarch is discussing the phenomenon of mempsimoiria, or criticizing your lot in life and envying others.
The Stoics thought envy was foolish, and bad reasoning. If other people’s grass is greener, and those people think the grass is greener somewhere else, or in your field, someone has to be wrong. Maybe we’re all delusional to think getting what others have will finally satisfy us. Maybe getting what we lust after isn’t the key to happiness at all.
The Stoics taught that freedom from the misery of envy isn’t achieved by satisfying desires, but by removing them.
Marcus Aurelius instructs himself to, “Don’t imagine having things that you don’t have. Rather, pick the best of the things that you do have and think of how much you would want them if you didn’t have them.”
Solid advice.