The Stoic Challenge

Sometimes your life is going along smoothly, splendidly even, and then, out of the blue, an obstacle appears. It can happen at work, at play, at home, or as was the case with my airport setback, while traveling. The plan you devised for yourself can no longer be carried out, so you have to come up with a new one. In a typical day, you likely experience any number of setbacks. You might stub your toe, or burn the toast you were making for breakfast. You might get caught in the rain without an umbrella, or find yourself stuck in a traffic jam that makes you late for work. But these are low-grade setbacks, mere nuisances, hiccups in your daily routine. Getting the flu is a more significant setback, especially if it disrupts your plans for the next few days. Unexpectedly losing your job almost certainly counts as a major setback, inasmuch as it will force you to change many of your plans for the coming months. These setbacks are easily topped, though, by the death of a spouse, by discovering that you have a fatal illness, or by being imprisoned for a crime you didn't commit, or for one you did. You might assume that your death would count as a major setback, but whether it does depends on what happens after you die. Suppose there is no life after death. Then your death might count as a setback for your survivors, but not for you. After all, in the absence of an afterlife, dying requires no change of plans on your part. It instead means the end of planning, period. If there is an afterlife, though, death might count as a setback. If reincarnation is true, you might come back as a person, in which case your death means another lifetime of dealing with setbacks, which itself might be construed as a major setback. And if you come back not as a person, but as, say, a mosquito, you will face a whole new set of challenges, although you probably won't have sufficient brain power to think of them as setbacks. Suppose, however, that life after death involves not reincarnation into another body, but continued existence as yourself. If you spend your afterlife in hell, then your death would represent the biggest setback imaginable. If you spend it in heaven, your death would represent not a setback, but a major advance, a set forward, as it were, since it would involve a transition to an infinitely preferable existence. It isn't clear, though, that you would be eternally happy in heaven. The problem is that when you went there, you would take your personality with you, including, quite likely, a propensity to take whatever you have for granted. Before long, you would start taking heaven's perfection for granted, and it would therefore cease to delight you. Perhaps God, in his infinite wisdom, will cause you to experience minor setbacks in heaven, just to prevent you from getting spoiled. Along similar lines, Satan, if he exists, probably realizes that a hell in which setbacks are possible is more hellish than one in which they aren't. He will therefore take steps to prevent the damned from thinking their situation is hopeless. In particular, he might periodically allow them to experience a ray of hope, just so he can subsequently deal them a setback by cruelly extinguishing it. Sometimes it is nature that sets you back. A deer might run into the path of your car, causing you to total it. Or a storm might leave you without electrical power for a week. During that time, you will discover the extent to which you take the presence of electricity for granted. And after power is restored, you will likely, if you are paying attention, discover how little time it takes you to start taking it for granted again. In most cases, though, it isn't nature that obstructs your progress, it is other people. Often they do so without intending to harm you. An incompetent waiter, for example, might get your order mixed up. Or a driver might swerve to miss a deer, thereby avoiding a setback for himself, but causing you to swerve and subsequently crash your car, thereby setting you back financially and maybe medically as well.