Plutarch’s 8 keys to tranquility of mind for 2023 (or any year, really)
The philosopher Plutarch’s little book On Tranquility of Mind [euthymia] was written some 2000 years ago. It remains ‘ahead of its time’, or rather, a timeless set of observations about why people become unhappy, and the keys to being happier.
For Plutarch, like the Stoics or the Epicureans:
… everyone has within themselves the store-rooms of tranquillity and discontent, and the jars containing blessings and evils are not stored ‘on the threshold of Zeus’ …
That is, whilst we can’t control everything that happens to us — only Zeus (the gods, nature, chance, fate) can — there are things we can each do, ideas we can each entertain, which will make us more content.
The reason people of all stations become unhappy, discontent with who they are and the world they live in, Plutarch argues, is a mixture of three things we each can address: our natural vanity, our tendency to want things we don’t need (and to desire what others have, because they have them), and a lack of self-knowledge.
Unless we become aware of these tendencies, they kind of “live through us”, making us always want to be something or someone or somewhere we ain’t. The good news is that we can become so aware, and set about changing.