Instead of using my faculty for the purpose for which I have received it, am I to mourn and lament at the events of fortune?
“Yes, but my mucus flows.”
Slave! What have you hands for then? Is it not to wipe your mucus away?
“Is it reasonable then that there should be mucus in the world?”
Well, how much better it is to wipe your mucus away than to complain!
“I have caught a cold, and my nose is running. It is quite unpleasant. There is no God.”
As ridiculous as that may sound, the underlying attitude is quite prevalent. I see it around me every day, and I catch myself falling into it more often than I care to admit. It may sound more dramatic when the stakes are higher, but the thinking, whatever the degree, is still the same.
Fortune has not done what I asked of her; clearly, she is not being fair.
I was passed over for a promotion, so there can be no justice in the Universe.
The love of my life will not even speak to me, so I have been deeply wronged by Nature.
I find myself in crippling pain from a disease I didn’t ask for, so Providence has obviously failed me.
I never hurt a fly, and now they’re going to take me out in the prison yard and shoot me. To hell with God!
It seems rather overwhelming, and yet taking the Stoic Turn will put all of that in its place.
The mistaken assumption is that my good and my bad come from what happens to me. There is another way, to embrace the good and the bad in what I choose to do.
And in making me as I am, a creature of reason and of will, is that not precisely what Providence intended? I get confused when I think that I am a creature made to receive pleasure, praise, or profit.
“But I deserve it!”
Let me channel my deepest Epictetus in reply. I deserve nothing but what I make of myself, and who I am has absolutely nothing to do with any worldly spoils. I am the sum of what comes from me; to say that I am anything else is like saying that a popsicle is defined by a panda.
Rich or poor? Irrelevant to character. Big or small? Meaningless to happiness. I only blame God when I haven’t managed my own soul.
If my nose runs, God gave me a hand to wipe away the snot. If my neighbor thrashes me, God gave me the ability to meet his hatred with love.
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