Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.9

Someone has asked me to write for him to Rome, one who, as the world thought, had had misfortunes; he had once been famous and rich, and had now lost everything and was living here. 

 

So I wrote for him in a humble tone. And he read my letter and gave it back to me and said, “I wanted your help, not your pity.”

 

 So, too, Rufus, to try me, used to say, “Your master will do this or that to you”; and when I answered him, “This is the lot of man”, “Why then”, said he, “do I appeal to your master when I can get everything from you?”

 

All noble theories aside, if I take the time to look back at the ups and downs of my life, I am amazed at the quite practical relationship between my thinking and my living. I suppose the proof is in the pudding, and I should not be surprised at all. 

 

Whenever I had sincerely directed my daily attention to a kinship with the Divine, there was also been a corresponding improvement in my power to be most fully human. Whenever I had been more concerned with the weight of my circumstances, that mastery over myself immediately began to slip away. 

 

If I remember where I come from, I am peace with myself. If I neglect where I come from, I am constantly at the mercy of my fears and longings. The focus provides the anchor. 

 

Some say this is a matter of psychology, and others say it is the work of grace, and the Stoic says it is a judgment of common sense. They may all be right—I simply know that it works. 

 

Thinking of myself as a bundle of flesh and desires, I am now just a slave to my own passions. Thinking of myself as possessing a divine spark, my own reason lifts me up. 

 

That self-reliance of Stoicism, then, does not exist in a vacuum, but works within the greater context of Providence. However hackneyed it might sound, God helps those who help themselves. 

 

We are all tempted to reduce ourselves to conditions, underestimating our ability to find the good in whatever might come our way. Even Epictetus succumbed to this, when his letter for a friend tried to tug at the heartstrings, instead of offering concrete assistance. Flattery, leverage, and manipulation are signs of weakness, not of strength; the wise man knows that his happiness comes from the good within him. 

 

Musonius Rufus had once offered Epictetus a useful lesson in this regard. Why appeal to a man’s master, when you can appeal directly to the man himself? Why work sideways, picking at the outside, when you can go straight to the source? It is our own internal judgments that will make or break us, not messing about by rearranging the furniture. 

 

By all means, have enough compassion to offer aid, and have enough humility to accept it, but never think that you can do someone’s work for him, or that he can be expected to do yours. 

Written in 11/2000