. . . "'But give me directions!' Why should I give you directions? Has not Zeus given you directions? Has he not given to you what is your own free from hindrance and free from impediment, and what is not your own subject to hindrance and impediment?
"What directions then, what kind of orders did you bring when you came from him?
"Keep by every means what is your own; do not desire what belongs to others. Fidelity is your own, virtuous shame is your own; who then can take these things from you? who else than you yourself will hinder you from using them?
"But how do you act? when you seek what is not your own, you lose that which is your own. Having such promptings and commands from Zeus, what kind do you still ask from me? Am I more powerful than he, am I more worthy of confidence? But if you observe these, do you want any others besides?
"'Well, but he has not given these orders', you will say. Produce your precognitions, produce the proofs of philosophers, produce what you have often heard, and produce what you have said yourself, produce what you have read, produce what you have meditated on, and you will then see that all these things are from God. How long, then, is it fit to observe these precepts from God, and not to break up the play? As long as the play is continued with propriety.
"In the Saturnalia a king is chosen by lot, for it has been the custom to play at this game. The king commands: 'Do you drink,' 'Do you mix the wine,' 'Do you sing,' 'Do you go,' 'Do you come.' I obey that the game may not be broken up through me.
But if he says, 'Think that you are in evil plight', I answer, 'I do not think so'; and who compels me to think so? Further, we agreed to play Agamemnon and Achilles. He who is appointed to play Agamemnon says to me, 'Go to Achilles and tear from him Briseis.' I go. He says, 'Come,' and I come." . . .
Epictetus, Discourses 1.25 (tr Long)
Why can't there be an owner's manual, complete with step-by-step multilingual instructions? Why is there no IKEA for the happy life? Why must it all seem so cryptic and complex?
I find myself asking such questions only when I am really making excuses. Saying that the answers are unknowable allows me to wallow in skepticism, and saying that the solutions are too confusing allows me to hide away from effort. This, in turn, allows me to live under the illusion of deferring my responsibility for myself.
But the answers are neither cryptic nor complex, and life requires no set of directions any more than Nature itself has already given us. To borrow from the Catholic tradition, the law is already written on the human heart.
If I consider that the perfection of any thing is achieved the what is specific to its own nature, and never simply by what is external to it, and if I at the same time consider that it is the nature of man, as a being of intellect and of will, to know the truth, love the good, and to act according to truth and goodness, then I already have my answer. It isn't unknowable, and it isn't too confusing. Only my past habits are getting in my way.
In the simplest of terms, I must act through what is my own, and not depend upon what is not my own. The reverse is also true. As soon as I depend upon what is not my own, I have surrendered what is my own. Here is the difference between a free man and a slave.
The great tradition of philosophy and literature, from Epictetus to Shakespeare, has often made use of acting in a play as an analogy for life. Most things in our lives, our conditions and circumstances, are given to us, as if by the directions of the playwright or the director. How well I play my part, however, and how well I choose to understand my part, are those things that are within my power.
Written in 7/2005
Image: Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother (1936)
No comments:
Post a Comment