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April 29, 2019 -- Tucson, Arizona, Sunday

“Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

On the day after the movie Avengers: Endgame premiered, I heard an interview on public radio with the person who held the Guinness World Record for the most paid viewings of a single movie  in a theater. The movie was the penultimate in the Marvel Avengers franchise, Avengers: Infinity War. The record holder watched the film one hundred and three times as Josh Brolin as Thanos wipe out half of all life in the universe with a snap of his fingers.

This same viewer had already seen the latest release four times in twenty-four hours and held tickets for two more showings that same evening. When the interviewer asked him why he had watched one movie so many times he replied that he had always loved the Marvel characters and the Avengers were his all-time favorites. Pressed to elaborate he finally said, "Well, I saw it a few times and then I decided to see what the world record for the most viewings of a single film was. When I called Guinness they told me that there wasn't a documented record but if I saw it a whole bunch of times and sent in the proof they'd give me the record. They sent me all the forms and stuff and so I did it."

AND?????

It occurred to me that I'd been expecting something a bit more profound than a simple act of ego, of wanting to hold a world record. After all, the movie takes the best of western mythology from the Greek, Celtic, Scandinavian, and probably several other traditions, mashes them together into a moral quagmire where Thanos believes he must destroy half the life in the universe in order to save the rest. That's quite a decision to rest on the shoulders of one individual, even if that individual happens to be a superhero with godlike abilities.

I'll confess to watching 'Infinity War' once, to getting a mild thrill at the heroic attempts to prevent the apocalypse and to being curious how there could even be another movie with nearly all of the opposition dead (the good guys mind you!) and Thanos living in what appeared to me a solitary Eden-like garden far, far away from the decimated world we call home.

The more I thought about that over the days and weeks after seeing the movie, I realized it didn't matter how the next movie came together, it would truly be meaningless as far as having anything to say beyond here's a fun way to give up two hours of your life. The powers in play are so large, the abilities so beyond the pale, and the outcome actually better than what every one of us faces at the end of our mortal life, at least as far as we can tell, that the movie and all of the twenty-two other Marvel Universe films served only to shift money from the hands of viewers to the film industry in exchange for some respite from the day-to-day struggle to ward off the extinction of the entire universe each of us experiences when we lose consciousness for the last time. That cheery thought took me to Marcus Aurelius and the book of his philosophical writings, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

M.A. was a Roman Emperor from 161 CE to 180 CE. A follower of Zeno's school of Stoic Philosophy, he remains one of the most interesting and widely read thinkers in human history. Looking at his writing, if anyone ever did have to decide whether or not to eliminate half the life in the universe to save the other half, I'd vote for M.A. to make the call.

Stoicism is many things. Two that stand out as particularly useful in thinking about the philosophy for our current world culture are that stoicism is based on logical principles and practices, and stoicism insists on being real, on looking at facts and evidence rather than dreams and what-ifs.

If you want to practice stoicism, here is a list of behaviors to consider:

1) Face your fear. Most of what we are afraid of will never happen to us, and if it does, it won't be nearly as bad as we imagine. The way to prove or disprove this is to immediately confront fear when you feel it. This is particularly important when it comes to small things that chew at you every day with little anxious teeth. This blog is an example of my facing a small fear, that of putting myself out in the world. Someone might laugh at me! I might get trolled! I might offend someone and they'll hate me forever!

What's a small fear you have that you can face today?

2) Flip your challenges on their head. You've heard the expression, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade," that's how the stoic life treats every problem. I remember a day when I overslept and was an hour late to work. It was a serious matter because I was the opening manager and a lot of people would be inconvenienced, plus I could potentially lose my job. I decided that this would be an opportunity for me to build some trust with my new boss and to let the people that worked for me see how to handle adversity. I called my boss, explained and owned my situation, and offered to accept whatever consequences were appropriate and customary. He paused a moment and then laughed, telling me that clearly I was beating myself up a lot more effectively than he ever could. "Don't let it happen again, but I understand," were his final words. As to my staff, I apologized, made sure they were paid for the time they lose, and gave them all a safe space to give me grief about my conduct. And, I made sure the next time one of them was late that I understood.

What challenge can you flip on its head today?

3. Nothing lasts forever. I'm getting on in life, and one piece of advice I heard from my father-in-law almost twenty years ago has proved enormously useful. Anytime I or anyone in his circle of acquaintances and descendants offered complaint or criticism about something that was outside of their control he would, after expressing his sorrow at how we were feeling, look us in the eye and say "But don't worry. This too shall pass." You don't have to reflect very long to realize that most of the things that we complain about go away on their own in time. In fact, time is the one irresistible force in the universe. The greatest of mountains, eroding at 1/4 inch per year, will be completely erased in just under 1.4 million years, a mere .0028% of the earth's 5 billion year age, the equivalent of 11 days in a hundred year lifetime.

If you believed that time would eventually solve all of your problems, what could you let go of as far as worries and complaints? Make a list of unsolvable issues and put it away for three months without looking at it. Then take it out. How many of those issues are now gone?

I'll continue on this topic in my next post. In the meantime, look at the three practices above. I don't know if any of these will defeat Thanos or bring back the half of life that was wiped out by a snap of his fingers, but I do know that if you practice these you'll feel a lot more at ease sitting in the theater watching the latest installment. While you're at it, you might consider your problems and how they stack up against those of the remaining Avengers.

As Richard Carlson, M.D. famously wrote, "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff."