Musonius Rufus, Fragments 38

Of the things that exist, God has put some in our control, others not in our control. In our control he has put the noblest and most excellent part by reason of which He is Himself happy, the power of using our impressions. 

 

For when this is correctly used, it means serenity, cheerfulness, constancy; it also means justice and law and self-control and virtue as a whole. 

 

But all other things He has not put in our control. 

 

Therefore, we ought to become of like mind with God and, dividing things in like manner, we ought in every way to lay claim to the things that are in our control, but what is not in our control we ought to entrust to the Universe and gladly yield to it whether it asks for our children, our country, our body, or anything whatsoever.

 

For the habitual reader of Stoicism, these ideas should sound comfortably familiar, from a far better-known text. 

 

I can only imagine a younger Epictetus listening attentively to his teacher, Musonius, and then in turn eventually passing these principles on to his students, in his own way. It was Arrian of Nicomedia who finally wrote down what Epictetus had to say. 

 

There is no shame in that at all, because the truth is always the truth, and our own originality concerns how we express it from our own distinct dispositions, circumstances, and perspectives. It never diminishes personality and preference to embrace the fact that the whole plays itself out in many diverse parts. 

 

I am sometimes told that these Stoic values on self-reliance are depressing, that they limit the scope of our lives. 

 

“So all I have is myself? That’s it?”

 

I suggest a different point of view. 

 

First, it isn’t just about an isolated self, sitting there all alone, but rather a responsible self, attending to one’s own business while reaching out to the whole wide world. 

 

Second, it is hardly a little thing to become one’s own master; it is quite a big thing to play a brilliantly conscious part in the marvelous unfolding of things, to become a creature that is more like the Creator. 

 

We can only speak of what is jointly ours when we first attend to the scope of our individual selves. 

 

Let me rule what is within my power, and let other things rule what is within their power, and I will be overjoyed to find that Providence has precisely made it to work out that way.