Meanwhile, tech bros like Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday have used it to develop cult followings, delivering stoicism to Silicon Valley as a way to reconcile great wealth and excess with some idea of piety. There’s a whole chapter on stoicism as a way of ‘fear-hacking’ in bestselling self-help author Caroline Foran’s recent book The Confidence Kit. And so we’ve revived it, co-opting it to suit the current zeitgeist. And stoicism provides pretty much cradle-to-grave advice about how to handle everything from romantic rejection to our own mortality,’ explains Brigid Delaney, author of Reasons Not to Worry: How to be Stoic in Chaotic Times. Yet there’s still a need to have rules or guidance. ‘We’ve now got two generations of millennials who’ve grown up without organised religion, without a belief framework. And the popular Daily Stoic Instagram account, with its grounding quotes from Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, has a 1.8 million-strong following. Print sales of Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic shot up by 42% in 2020. While the ancient philosophy’s popularity has fluctuated since it was first conceived in the 3rd century BC, stoicism is on the rise, particularly among my age group. The original Stoics, including Seneca and Epictetus, believed in grieving loved ones while they are still alive, familiarising yourself with the feelings so that they don’t later incapacitate you. They include steeling yourself, evaluating and moderating your emotions, keeping an even keel in the face of turbulent times and accepting the inevitability of death. It might sound like a leaning towards self-flagellation or, worse, martyrdom, but stoicism’s original doctrines are all strong, enabling tenets to live by. The word is often and easily misconstrued its Ancient Greek principles of reason, neutrality and persistent self-control fell out of favour in the Sixties when emotional expression, talking therapy and empathy became the preferred approach to mental health. The chorus hit as I walked towards the sliding doors of the hospital, a blurred outline of my mum behind them: ‘So toughen up, Biko, toughen up.’ And that’s exactly what I did. And I wanted to sit with the idea, walk around and through it until I knew all its pathways, making peace with it before seeing my family, who would need me to do practical things as we planned for what might come next. There we were, confronted with a major stroke after his decade-long battle with cancer a body that had proven resilient was older now, and fragile. Letting some of those waves wash over me too, holding the idea that this could be the moment my dad’s already dimming light would be snuffed out. Bloc Party’s song Biko playing on repeat in my headphones the lyrics ‘You have crossed the River Styx / and the waves have taken you away’ delivering a perfect requiem. I can picture myself moving through the empty Gatwick corridors after landing in London at an ungodly hour. Instead, I listened, packed a bag and walked calmly to her car. A nearby cousin drove miles to knock on our door and give me the message in person, expecting me to collapse into her arms. I was in my university flat in Edinburgh, sitting down to a Sex and the City marathon with friends. I remember vividly the evening my Dad had a stroke.
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