Stockdale on Stoicism 11

I know the difficulties of gulping all this down right away. You keep thinking of practical problems. Everybody has to play the game of life. You can't just walk around saying: "1 don't care about my health, or wealth, or my reputation, or whether I'm sent to prison or not." Epictetus was a great teacher because he could draw a word picture that cleared up the way to look at what he was talking about.

In this case, Epictetus said everybody should play the game of life—that the best play it with "skill, form, speed, and grace." But like most games, you play it with a ball. Your team devotes all its energies to getting the ball across the line. 

But after the game, what do you do with the ball? Nobody much cares. It's not worth anything. The competition, the game, was the thing. You play the game with care, making sure you are never making the external a part of yourself, but merely lavishing your skill in regard to it. 

The ball was just "used" to make the game possible, so just roll it under the porch and forget it, let it wait for the next game. Most important of all, just don't covet it, don't seek it, don't set your heart on it. It is this latter route that makes externals dangerous, makes them the route to slavery. First you covet or abhor "things," and then along comes he who can confer or remove them. 

I quote Enchiridion: " A man's master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others, else he must necessarily become a slave." 

Discourses: "Who is your master? He who has authority over any of the things upon which you have set your heart." 

These last quotations constitute the real core of what a person needs in order to understand the P.O.W. situation.

—from James B. Stockdale, The Stoic Warrior's Triad