Epictetus, The Handbook 6: Accuse neither Oneself nor Others

What disturbs men’s minds is not events but their judgments on events. For instance, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates would have thought it so. No, the only dreadful thing about it is men’s judgment that it is dreadful.

And so when we are hindered, or disturbed, or distressed, let us never lay the blame on others, but on ourselves, that is on our own judgments.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education; to accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun; to accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 5 (tr Matheson)

This has long been one of my favorite Stoic passages, and over the years I have pretty much memorized it. It has been quite a comfort when things don’t seem to be going “my way”, because it reminds me exactly what my way should be. It not only sums up so much of Stoic wisdom, but also does so in quite a radical manner.

Things will only be as good or bad as I choose to make them. I am the only cause for my happiness or misery, and I should never blame another. I need not even blame myself anymore once I am living with full responsibility for my own actions.

Such claims always raise eyebrows. We are all quite familiar with the practice of casting blame on others, perhaps because it seems easier to live that way. I find it actually to be a much harder way to live, because I am constantly enslaved by my circumstances.

We might also seek to accuse others out of sense of justice, out of righting the wrongs of our fellows. The Stoic, however, will point out that I can never right another’s wrongs, because that is only within his power. I can only right my own wrongs.

To take a Stoic Turn is to reverse the accustomed order of accountability, and it can be the most liberating of life’s experiences. The only thing getting me down is me, simply because only I can be in control of myself.

I had an experience both frustrating and humorous a while back, when a relative accused my young son of stealing his cell phone. I struggled with myself to tolerate almost an entire day of recriminations and criticisms of how poorly I was raising my child, until his wife discovered it under the pillow in their bed. After an awkward silence, he told me that none of this would have happened if I had done more to help him find it.

Now here I had to resist my feelings quite strongly, and to avoid telling him that I would be sure to check under his wife’s pillow the next time I was in her bed. I most certainly felt anger, but I needed to remember that his anger was his own, and mine was mine.

I spent many years going back and forth between blaming another and blaming myself for the most painful event of my life. It took me far too long to learn that the loss required no blame at all, not even regret. I certainly should not blame someone else for the state of my life, because making something of it is my job. And once I can own my own mistakes, I can transform those mistakes into right action.

If I genuinely and honestly fix a wrong, not by hiding it away or by making excuses, I’ve been completely responsible for myself. I don’t even need to accuse myself once I have done that. The stain has been washed out, because I’ve finally done my own laundry.

Written in 10/2011