Why Having A Price On My Head Didn't Upset Me - Stoicism in Practice

How philosophy helped me deal with being a hunted man

“We want to inform you that your life is in danger. There is a group of people who plan on taking your life. The investigation is in progress, and there is nothing more that we can share with you. We cannot offer you personal protection. Our job is to inform you about this and advise you to leave your home only when absolutely necessary.”

How would you react after hearing this?

What if I told you that I got up, left the police station, and went about my day as if nothing had happened?

As soon as I arrived home, I got changed and did my daily workout. It had to be really quick because this unplanned trip to the police station messed up my schedule.
After I finished my workout, I got ready and went to work. On the first break, I finished up my daily Instagram post. On the second break, I had calls with my online training clients. I finished my shift, went back home, and spent some time with my mother, who wasn’t aware of the conversation I had earlier that day.

And what if I told you that I didn’t react so calmly to this pretty unusual news because I am some fearless tough guy, but because I am a person who likes to read, and more importantly, a person who likes to actually apply the things that he reads?

“The person who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive." - Seneca

This is a story about how philosophy is meant to be used to enhance your life. This is not about me trying to shock you or impress you with my unusual life story.
But in order to prove my point through personal experience, I have to provide some context.

The conversation in the police station, where I was officially informed that there is a group of people organized around taking my life, took place in October 2021.

But let’s rewind back to April 2020, when I had another interesting conversation.

I was at work, sitting with my colleague talking about MMA, when I got a message from the closest person in my life.

“The things I was afraid of have been confirmed. If they can’t get to me, they might decide to come after you. I cannot guarantee they will, but we can’t take any chances. Start making plans on how to find a new job and move to a different country. The further away, the better. Until then, don’t leave the house except when going to work. Sorry for putting you in this situation.”

“Okay” was my answer.

Then I continued to talk with my colleague about MMA.

After I finished my shift, I went home, got changed, and did my daily workout. After my post-workout meal, I sat down to make my daily Instagram post. Then, I started thinking about what was “the best” way to leave the life I'd been building up to that point and start building a new one.

If I am not a sociopath and I didn’t have my emotions removed by some secret, not yet released technology, how did I get to the point of not freaking out in a situation like this?

To explain, I’ll have to rewind the clock once more, back to 2016.
It was one of the high points of my life.
I got a high-paying job at just 21, which is extremely uncommon in my country. I was healthy and physically fit. I had great friends and was receiving a lot of attention from girls. What more could a 21-year-old guy want?

At that point, I was also starting to take my interest in philosophy more seriously.

And I always took philosophy for what it originally was—the art of living.
That’s why, for me, taking philosophy more seriously didn’t mean learning bigger words and more complex (but useless) theories in order to sound smart. It meant taking these ideas given to me by some of the wisest people that ever lived and starting to actually apply them to my own life.

One of those ideas was Premeditatio Malorum, a Stoic premeditation of the evils and troubles that might lie ahead.

Before reading the Stoics, all I ever “heard” when reading the books that are supposed to help you live a better life was “just think positively.”

If you think only about the good things that can happen in the future, only good things will happen, right? Wrong.

Anyone who has actually lived this life knows that this is not how the world works.

It was the Stoics who taught me that a person who refuses to look at the possible negative future scenarios is leaving himself or herself wide open to be crushed by the winds of fate when they change their direction.

Meanwhile, the one who contemplates the things that could go wrong in the future is strengthening themselves and becoming better prepared to deal with the future, no matter how it looks.

This is why the Stoics advocated the practice of Premeditatio Malorum.

It does not mean wishing for bad things to happen. It does not mean constantly stressing about things that haven’t happened yet and maybe won’t even happen.

It means preparing yourself so that you are not caught off guard if they do happen. Because some of them most definitely will.

And I listened to the Stoics.

I looked at my life and what could go wrong in the future.

Besides the things that could go wrong in everyone’s life, such as illness, accidents, and unexpected deaths, either of yourself or someone close to you, there was something else in my own case, something unusual and worth thinking about.

If someone is close enough to you, a lot of their decisions and actions can affect you. If someone is the closest person you have in your life, most of their decisions and actions will definitely affect you. And when this person tends to make reckless and dangerous decisions and actions, no matter how good their intentions are, the sky becomes the limit in terms of things that could go wrong in the future for both of you.

Premeditatio Malorum, like many other philosophical ideas that I found useful (and intend to write about in the future), became a part of my life. And even though I did not torture myself with constant thoughts of everything that could go wrong, I couldn’t allow myself not to consider the possibilities and prepare myself as well as I could.

I learned that there is a world where if you want to hurt someone but are not able to, then you hurt the person closest to them. (I hope that this world is far, far away from your own.)

So I started preparing myself for the possibility that I could become a part of this world, even if I didn’t want to, and I didn’t do anything to deserve that privilege.

In April 2020, these preparations proved useful.

By the point I received that message, it'd already been almost a year since I contemplated the possibility of something like this happening. Not because I was told it might happen, but just because I developed the practice of contemplating the evils and troubles that might lie ahead—Premeditatio Malorum.

The key part of the message I received is that “they might decide” to come after me.

And from April 2020 until October 2021, the only thing I knew was that "they might."

If I listened to some people who truly cared about me and were familiar with my situation, I would believe that such things don’t happen to “good” people like myself.

I could’ve spent my time thinking only about the positive things that can happen in the future and trying to delude myself into believing how “they might” will turn out to be “they won’t”.

If I listened to those well-intentioned people, I probably wouldn't be alive today.

Obviously, I did the opposite.

I prepared myself for a moment in the future when I would either be officially informed that there were people coming for me, or I would discover this for myself in the most direct way possible.

It certainly didn’t feel comfortable thinking every day about there being a group of people who want to end my life, but I believe it would be much less comfortable rejecting that possibility and living in an illusion, only to wake up from that illusion and find myself in a living nightmare.

And in my case, a more practical and straightforward benefit of this kind of thinking is that it is because of it that I am alive and able to write this today. It turns out, as I was told, that I was not an easy target. And that’s solely because I was prepared to accept the possibility of being a target and live accordingly.

That’s why on that October morning in the police station, while they were talking to me there was no shock and no panic.

Thoughts going through my mind were:
”Okay, you were prepared for this to happen. It was better to find out like this then the other way.”
”You were preparing to leave your current life behind. Now you know those preparations weren’t for nothing.”
”I hope they finish talking soon because at this rate I will barely have the time to do my workout before I go to work.”

The purpose of me telling you this story is not to try to say how I’ve had it tough or that I’m some badass, iron-minded Stoic.

The purpose is to send you this message:

There are people who go through much more difficult and stressful things then what I went through so far. And they manage to deal with it.

There are also people who get completely crushed by some objectively smaller and less difficult life obstacles.

One of the major differences between these two types of people is how they look at life.

Some go through life thinking that nothing bad can nor will happen to them.
Others go through life knowing that this world hasn’t yet spared anyone from their fair share of struggle.

I will let you guess which group of people is better equipped to deal with ups and downs of life.

Finally, philosophy is not obscure theories and big words that you use to sound smart. It is not the quotes you share on social media to seem profound.

Philosophy is the art of living and it is meant to be practiced every single day.

My plan is to keep sharing my personal experience of practicing this beautiful art through my life adventure, as well as sharing what I’ve learned from seeing other people practice, and maybe even master this art.

Thank you for reading and talk to you soon.
Until then, stay strong, love life and never feel sorry for yourself.

Couple of notes:
-If you’ve been following my instagram page for a while, I hope you can now understand why I ignore the messages and comments asking about where I live.
I hope you can understand that, the less personal information I share with you, the less chances there are that your favorite “instagram philosopher” somehow disappears.
Even sharing my story like this is far from a smart and safe thing to do, but I feel that it’s the right thing to do.
-Finally, if you haven’t figured out by the things that I write, receiving any kind of pity because of the situation I’m in would be a great insult to me. The only thing I accept is respect, and you’ve already given me that by reading what I have to say.
-Also, as this is intended to be read by those who follow my instagram page, I thought it was not necessary to explain in more detail the Premeditatio Malorum idea, since I’ve written about it just a couple of days ago.