Epictetus, The Handbook 18: Working with the Playwright

Remember that you are an actor in a play, and the Playwright chooses the manner of it: if he wants it short, it is short; if long, it is long.

If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man.

For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well; the choice of the cast is Another's.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 17 (tr Matheson)

I never had the gift for acting, but I remember those who did, and I also remember that they would often grumble about the difficulty of following the Director’s instructions.

I always had the dream of recording music professionally, though I was hardly skilled enough to do so. Yet I always wondered about the influence the Producer had in making a record.

I did once have an opportunity to actually make a bit of money from writing, but I had to stare straight in the face of an Editor. I pondered about the difference between what I had written, and what someone else wanted me to write.

Director, Producer, Editor. Was life really meant to be filtered by the seller at the expense of the artist?

I was drawn very early on to a caricature of Stoicism because it seemed it was a philosophy that would help me to get my way. Two things were wrong with that assumption. I thought it was about me, and I thought it was about a certain sort of way.

First, a philosophy shouldn’t be about what is convenient to me, but about what is right for me. I needed to conquer my own selfishness.

Second, I needed to stop thinking about philosophy as something that helped me to succeed in the world of competition, and more as something that helped me be fulfilled in the world of cooperation.

If you are an actor, a musician, or a writer, you know full well how hard it to swallow that ego. It means recognizing that what I am doing is part of something bigger than me, and I can be just as free and creative doing my part well, while also allowing everyone else to do their part well.

So it is in life, as informed by the Stoic principle about what is or is not within my power. There is absolutely no need for me to play God in order to be happy, and it isn’t necessary for me to order and direct every aspect of my world. It is simply enough for me to be content with what has been given, and to order and direct myself.

I have come to suspect that there is a far greater freedom and dignity in respecting that the world will be as it will be, than struggling and straining to make it in my own image. At the very least I have learned the freedom of humility, and the dignity of genuine responsibility.

If I struggle to live a long or prosperous life, a life of wealth, honor, or power, I’m not actually being a great man at all, because I am stubbornly worried about managing all the external conditions. In doing so, I’m neglecting the only thing Nature needs me to do, to direct my own soul, to get my own house in order, to play the role I am given, whatever it may be, with excellence.

Written in 11/2001