In a recent Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan Holiday briefly refers to an old, well-known Stoic concept, “The Cup Is Already Broken.”
The idea being, instead of wasting all of our time worrying about losing something, perhaps it’s best just to assume that the thing is “already lost.” “Everything is temporary,” after all.
If you don’t allow yourself to get too attached to that lovely teacup of great sentimental value that you have in your cupboard, when the inevitable day arrives when it gets broken/chipped/lost/ruined or whatever it won’t ruin your day because it was already “broken.” Instead of it being the end of the world, it’s just the nature of things.
Same with that fancy BMW you recently bought. Accepting that one day it’ll end up on the same scrap heap as all the other cars, will result in far less energy wasted freaking out when it invariably gets its very first scratch.
And this applies to far more important things than cups and cars. In “Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai,” Yamamoto Tsunetomo opens with the line, “A Samurai lives in death.” His idea being that if the Samurai warrior starts seeing himself as “Already Dead,” he’ll spend far less energy worrying about being killed, and far more energy on the actual mission.
One can see why this “non-attachment” idea would take hold in a feudal Japanese culture, when constant and arbitrary suffering, violence, brutality and death was an everyday reality for most Samurai.
It was a cope, sure, but it was also useful to them, or else it wouldn’t have caught on.
Perhaps this “Cup is already broken” idea would also works in our business life too.
Our business model has already broken.
Our market has already crashed.
Our star employee has already gone to work for our competitor.
Our best client has already retired to Florida.
Our amazing tech has already become obsolete.
None of that may be true, then again, one day it might be, so it behooves us to not take the present for granted.
Like Princess Leia told Darth Vader in one of the opening scenes of Star Wars Episode IV, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” Business can be like that. We get so attached to the things we think will make us successful, we sometimes lose our grip on the things that actually would’ve made us flourish. So it goes.
