5 Life Tips from Ancient Philosophers

Note: This article is by Eric Weiner, who gives us life advice from his book, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers.

Do not seek knowledge, but wisdom

The amount of information and knowledge available today is overwhelming, but it frequently lacks wisdom. Knowledge is a collection of facts, but wisdom is knowledge analysis and application to our advantage.

The British musician Miles Kington expressed this idea by saying: "Knowledge is your understanding that tomatoes are a kind of fruit, but wisdom is not putting them in a fruit salad." Wisdom is an acquired skill, and the belief that you can be wise with luck is like believing you can learn to play the violin with a chance.

But that's what we do precisely. We get lost in the maze of life and try to pick up bits of wisdom everywhere, but we ignore philosophy, the actual source of wisdom.

Disturb those around you, for all the great philosophers were disturbed

Socrates was a tremendous annoyance. He was known as the "horse fly" in Athens because he asked all kinds of questions to all people.

For example, Socrates asked the soldier commander about the meaning of courage and asked a poet about beauty. Socrates insisted on getting answers to his questions until he made others angry. That is because they were unable to give him satisfactory answers.

The soldier commander did not know what courage was, and the poet did not have the slightest idea of beauty. Socrates was inquiring about what was in their minds and revealing their ignorance to them, and he saw that this was the first step on the path to actual knowledge.

So, go ahead and annoy people, but start with yourself, and put your assumptions and "knowledge" into doubt. Be Socrates yourself, and upset yourself first.

Look at things from different angles

We tend to go through life in a straight line, but we will see and know more if we look at things from a different angle. The best person who knows this is the philosopher and poet Henry David Thoreau, who was determined not to be constrained by a single visual angle.

He looked at Walden Lake from several creative angles: from the surface of the plateau, above water, or even underwater, so we can also benefit from looking at the world and our problems from a different angle. For example, the next time you walk down a different path, you will not know what you will encounter.

Do not control the circumstances, but your reaction to them

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus begins his book The Enchiridion with a simple idea: “Some things are up to us, and others are not, and this idea appears as clear as the moon in the night, but most of us think that all things are in our hands, meaning that if you are not rich, thin, or beautiful enough, it is because you are not doing what you can, and although a few external circumstances are due to us, we are always able to manage our interaction with them.

We always have a choice in how we respond to any situation and can control our mental and emotional lives. Circumstances alone do not determine our happiness, but our response to them, and this matter is always within our reach.”

Accept the absurdity of life

If you have ever felt the absurdity and futility of life, you are not alone. That is what the existential philosophers of France believed. For example, the writer Albert Camus says that life is devoid of any meaning or reason, and he likened our fate to Sisyphus, the poor Greek mythologist, who was condemned to roll a large rock up the mountain to roll back down that mountain again and again forever.

How can Sisyphus be happy? Camus answers that by owning his rock and being eager to work alone without waiting for the result of that work, he is glad, and so it must be our perseverance. We must own our rock and indulge in our work, no matter how absurd and sterile it may seem.

Another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, had another theory called eternal recurrence, which is the idea that the universe, including life, is repeated forever. If you find this true, what will you do? According to Nietzsche, the best response is to dance; when life laughs at you, dance; when it frowns at yourself, dance too. Do not only accept  life's absurdity, but also celebrate it.