Not Improving—Just Being
January 10, 2024
Recently, I can across a word I had never heard before – Ataraxia. I read it in a book, 'Living for Pleasure, an Epicurean Guide to Life' by Emily Austin. It means:
Ataraxia :
: calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet. a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety, unconditional tranquility: The highest goal of an Epicurean disciple was ataraxia—tranquility of mind.
The overall book is an overview of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. I don’t really know anything about him, but when my husband was reading bits out to me, it felt like something I could explore in this newsletter. And this perspective of tranquility seems a great antidote to new year’s resolutions.
I’ve never been one for new year’s resolutions. Taking something on only to give up a few weeks later didn't seem particularly satisfying. For me, they were always laced with the idea that I needed to improve versus being okay with exactly who I am. For some people, having goals and things they want to achieve is inspiring and healthy, which I love! It just wasn’t for me. I gave them up years ago as I’d always fell at the first hurdle and then beat myself up. Setting myself up for failure seemed like an awful waste of time. But there you are, that’s the beautiful thing about humans - we’re all different!
If you were to ask me what I know about Epicurus or the Epicurean philosophy, I’d say I’ve only come across it when it’s added with the word delight. ‘What an epicurean delight’… or something like that. Referring to good quality food or drink. Sensuous enjoyment. Epicurus was all about pleasure. “Pleasure is the starting point and the goal of living blessedly.” Happiness begins and ends with pleasure. When I read this, I was thinking, “My goodness, that feels quite hedonistic and not actually true! What a thing to strive for?!” As the author says, “Telling someone to aim at pleasure seems like a very unpromising starting point for a self-improvement plan, much less an ethical approach to living.”
But when I read further, Epicurus had a very different definition for pleasure. And that’s where it got interesting and resonated with me and the work we do. He believed that the best pleasure came from what is absent from your story - anxiety, or any “psychological disturbance.” Our foundation is an ‘anxiety free’ state. Epicurus calls this the ultimate pleasure. Unconditional Tranquility. That’s where I learned the word ataraxia.
This makes way more sense to me. And is totally aligned with Insight to Wellbeing. Our contentment, our peace comes from what we’re free of, rather than what we need more of. As participants have often said in class - I didn’t realize that freedom is a state of mind. What could be more pleasurable than freedom from any psychological disturbance. Tranquility of mind. This quality of being is our natural state. That was foreign to me growing up. In the past I thought, there aren’t enough new year’s resolutions in the world that could make me feel whole or good enough. Turns out, simply understanding my mind allows me to come back to my foundation, to my home base of unconditional tranquility.
My own interpretation of one of the things Epicurus was saying is, we go wrong when we look for happiness or pleasure outside of ourselves. We can fall into the trap of thinking that to feel pleasure we need to fill up on every hedonistic thing we can get our hands on. No one who sees bad chooses it, instead we are “lured by it as being good.”
The more of ourselves we uncover and the more aware we are, the less we are “lured” by outside pleasures and understand the source of real pleasure is a peaceful mind. Of course, there is nothing wrong with pleasure. I love pleasure! But if I think that's where my happiness lies, in finding it, then I'm looking in the wrong direction.