Why Stoic Werewolf?

Why Stoic Werewolf?

I get it. The name is a little much, or as a friend of mine put it, “are we committed to this? It sounds like a friend’s band I never want to go see. It sounds like a 12 year olds gamer handle. It sounds like a new pokemon now that they’ve run out of ideas. It sounds like,” DUDE. I get it. It’s an odd name, but we are, or at least I am, committed to it, and here is why.

My entire life I have had an untamable (or at least so I thought) temper. Call it societal, call it genetic, call it whatever you want. As far back as I can remember I have run hot. Something irks me, in just the right way, and I hit eleven, and I hit it fast. Why this is I cannot exactly tell you. All I know is that it is just as much a part of me as anything else, and trying to act as though it is not is just as, if not more damaging, than indulging it. I’ve had to look at it. Understand it. Know it. Wrestle with it. Name it. If we do not take the time to understand and contend with our demons then they dictate more of our personal expression than we can even truly comprehend.

Why have I had this temper? Like I said, I couldn’t tell you. My Dad had it. His Dad had it. His brothers had it. And I am sure it could be traced all the way back to ancient Greece. Combine that with the my mother’s half being Irish, and I think you make a perfect cocktail for a pretty ornery family tree. A family, filled with fire, just beneath the surface. Ready to go at any moment. But yet still a family filled with great men. Men who accomplished much more than what their humble beginnings would predict. Great men. Men who found a way to harness that fire and put it good use, while sometimes letting it burn them along the way… “and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.” Something like that.

That fire burned me far too many times in my young life. 27 years and it has ruined relationships, started brawls, held me back, hurt loved ones, and blinded me to my own transgressions. Maybe it was being an overweight and strange kid that fueled it. Standing out in the worst way and being pointed out for it.  It has been just as much a detriment as it has been an asset. For unwavering conviction can lead you full force into the depths of hell just as it can lead to salvation. To greatness. In order for them to lead you out of the chaos those convictions, that unstoppable force, must be tempered by the hand of something immovable. Something incorruptible. Something good. That must be the hand of logic. Of reason. Of morals and values. I found that reason in great many things, but most specifically, in the work of the Stoics. (The morals and values could be attributed to a multitude of influences. Stoics. Upbringing. Life lessons. Country. Stories. Other schools of philosophy. And even unknowingly, as an atheist, religion. But that is a much more complicated subject to be touched on latter.)

Apatheia. This was the name given to the state in which we are not ruled by our passions. This is the place in which the stoic minds strived for. The place of pure and unrelenting reason that could not be corrupted by the outside world, or by our responses to it. Why strive towards a place of unmitigated reason? A place void of the joys and sorrows of life? A place where there are no ups, no downs, and no in between? That place sounds much more like a purgatory than a nirvana. Like an empty wasteland of nothingness. No, it’s a calm meadow, where your mind can go to counsel your passion. The sorrows of life are, in sense, a certainty. There is no escaping that. There will be pain. There will be darkness. But to accept that axiom means to irrefutably accept the reverse. There will be joy. There will be light. Which of the two is more accessible is much longer debate, but I have come to believe that the sorrow is easier. It’s always easier to go down a hill rather than up. It easy to lose yourself in your dissatisfaction for life, in your idea of nothingness, and much harder to strive upwards. To march on, not seeing, but knowing that something better is on the horizon. That march, if guided properly, heads towards meaning.

Your passion is your torch allowing you to see just far enough in front of you, and your reason your map, giving you the guidance and destination for which to journey towards. (Gibran put it better obviously, as I quoted above, but you get the idea.) Apatheia gives us a reference point. Your compass, if you will, is something that will always keep us on track towards a much broader destination. What is that destination? Well, I would say meaning. I would say purpose. In our pursuit of these ideals we can get distracted, lost, put off track. The flame of our torch can show a path that looks easier. A path that looks more interesting. Or simply light the path back from where we came. You came that way after all, so not only can you see it, but it is much easier to find your way back down. The idea of Apatheia gives you an ideal to strive for that will quell the instincts to go down those paths. Will it always be reached? No.  Of course not, you will stumble, you will fall, you will even perhaps get wildly off track, and think yourself lost, but with that point of reference to aim towards, you will never be truly lost. Our emotions, our feelings, our animal instincts can lead to other paths, and at times they most certainly will. Sometimes those paths may even be the right ones, the better ones, but they must be guided by an emotionless judge, by a stoic monk. The tenets of stoicism can be that judge. They can keep you on the path of betterment. They can be the hand that guides you through the storm of your life, and the buffer for which you clash in order to create meaning out of the darkness.

Your werewolf is your passion. It is the burning sensation inside of you that desires something more. It is unfettered emotion and power that can accomplish unimaginable feats, and simultaneously reduce your personal world to rubble. It is your emotion. Your drive. Your lust. Your desire. Your anger. It wants. Insatiably it wants. It has no desire to be quieted. No desire to be quelled. It is simultaneous power of creation and destruction. Your best friend and your worst enemy. We all have elements of this monster inside of us. Some more than others. It is the spark of divine inspiration that can lead you to incredible heights and it is the same spark that left unattended can become a wildfire that burns you and everything you built to ash. It also can be a distracted and immature pup that chases from one car to the next with zero purpose or direction. We can never truly tame this wolf. We will always to some extent be held to it whims and to its wants. What we can do is do our best to be prepared for it, to be aware of even its worst capabilities, and to try our very best to give it some kind of outlet and direction.

This is why we must find a way to reconcile the two, why we must forge the connection between these two modes of being, and as I stated, that is what we aim to do here. Through creation, truth, and an aim to do good with that creation. We can begin to harness the power of our deep and flowing passion, so that we may guide it by the principles of stoicism. By logical ideals, and by a means of striving towards betterment. Ideals such as “amor fati,” a love of fate. The belief that not only should we embrace our fate, but love it, revile in it, welcome it with open arms.You should find pleasure in the pain, as it were, or at least understand that pain is a certainty. That in order to deal with our fate, we can't just bear it out, we must do our very best to enjoy any part of it we can. Or “memento mori,” a maxim of the infallible truth that we will all, one day, die. Through this practice we can constantly be reminded of how fleeting life can be and of our own fragility. That this experience could end at any moment, so to not put anything off, and also to remind us that all things end. All bad. All good. The only permanent is death, so get busy in living a life worth living. These axioms along with many others allow us to work towards betterment, betterment of self, but also of our community, of our society. To support the “common good,” as put by the stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius. Here we aim for that good.

Finally I would put it to this way. I would ask you which of these two scenarios would you rather inhabit. First we must look at life as a journey, and a journey in which you will occasional reach certain distinct battlefields, you may have companions along with you at different points, and at some, you may be completely alone. Regardless, the battles are inescapable, and must be waged in order to move forward. This is an infallible truth of life (metaphorically speaking) expect you can choose to endure this truth in one of two ways. The first, as purposed, you journey through life dealing with the pitfalls and hazards it throws your way, occasional reaching these inescapable battle fields that you must engage, but at any point, whether on the field of battle or journeying through the world, a monstrous, gigantic, vicious, and bloodthirsty Werewolf could find you at any minute. He could come across the battlefield and lay waste to your enemies, but he could also eviscerate you in the process. It is also just as likely that he may not surface at all, but the possibility is always present, and always in the back of your mind. The second being exactly the same as the first except that while fording through that journey, while waging through the slings and arrows of that battle, that same monster is no longer a random possibility, but an outright certainty, because he is no longer roaming free in the darkness, but there, right by your side. You have tamed him, or at least domesticated him to the degree a werewolf can be domesticated. You know there will be times where he will challenge you and your authority, but you also know, that if you remain calm and keep a steady hand, he will be put back in line, and put back on track towards waging war on your behalf.

So I’ll ask you, how would you choose to live your life? With a wolf? Or without?