Epictetus, The Handbook 9: Peaceful Happenings

Ask not that events should happen as you will, but let your will be that events should happen as they do, and you shall have peace.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 8 (tr Matheson)

This is yet another classic Stoic passage, of the sort that the The Handbook is filled with. I do, however, find that it is often very misunderstood.

I read this to a 12 Step group I was leading one day, and I was met with an unexpected and violent backlash. I certainly didn’t think it any different than the Niebuhr Serenity Prayer, but the rest of our group thought differently.

“That’s fatalism! I’m just supposed to sit back and let everything happen, and not care at all? How is that peace?”

I don’t think there is any sitting back here, and there is certainly quite a bit of caring. To “let” things happen hardly means surrendering to them. It is rather all about learning to control myself about all the things I can’t control.  It isn’t about being passive, but learning to be quite active in the right way.

Stoicism has never been about resignation. Stoicism, after all, always defines a man by what he does, and never by what happens to him. The trick is to recognize exactly what can, and should, be done.

At a time when I worked in social services, I had two colleagues, both at heart very fine people, who had very different views on how to solve their problems at work.

The first was always very concerned about changing situations, about making sure that all the right people were in all the right places. If there was a problem, the solution seemed to be that someone needed to be let go. I would always fear that I was on that checklist.

The second often seemed disinterested in the beginning, but I learned that his alternative model was to work with something, and to simply make right from what was given. He didn’t fire people, but made an effort to understand. He didn’t reject our clients or fellow workers, but adapted to them.

That is exactly what love is about. As soon as I say that I will only love under my own conditions, I have immediately ceased to love. Let us not confuse the passion of affection with the promise of commitment.

The world will simply be as it is. I have no control over most of this. Now I might vainly swim against the tide, or I might finally recognize the reality that I will never conquer the Earth. I may have no power over what is given, but I have all the power over what I can give.

I should never be passive, but I should certainly be active by working with and through my circumstances, and never against them.

Written in 3/2002