Epictetus, Discourses 1.12.8

Well then, as your parents are what they are, is no resource left you? Surely if you did not know to what end you possess the faculty of vision, you would be unhappy and miserable if you closed your eyes, when colors were brought near you; but are you not more wretched and unhappy still for not knowing that you have a high and noble spirit to face each occasion as it arises? 

 

The objects which correspond to the faculty that you have are brought near you: yet you turn away your faculty just at the very moment when you ought to keep it open-eyed and alert. 

 

Rather give thanks to the gods that they set you above those things which they put out of your power, and made you responsible only for what is within your control. For your parents they left you without responsibility; and the same is true of brothers, body, property, death, life. 

 

For what then did they make you responsible? For that which alone is in your power, the proper handling of your impressions. 

 

Why then do you insist on dragging in these things for which you are not responsible? That is to make trouble for yourself.

 

Is it any wonder when we believe that human freedom and Providence cannot coexist, if we arrogantly presume that liberty requires putting the rest of the world within our power? Does it not occur to us how other creatures will follow their own paths, while we are made to have power over ourselves? 

 

We abandon our own freedom by ignoring the one thing that is uniquely our own. 

 

When a man wishes to play God, it will come as no surprise that he rejects any other God. There can be only one Absolute, and he can’t bear the possibility that it isn’t him. 

 

What a shame it would be if I turned my eyes away from the glory of colors, or if I blocked my ears to the beauty in sounds. 

 

The far greater tragedy, however, is whenever I abuse my very judgments by employing them for all the wrong tasks, occupying them with changing the things that aren’t mine to determine, and neglecting to change my own sense of meaning and value. 

 

It would be as if a man found it impossible to drive in a nail with a saw, or cut a piece of wood with a hammer, and then complained that God had given him the wrong toolbox. 

 

I worry about how the world is not doing what I demand, and so I insist that I am therefore not free. Yet I am not free precisely because I am anxious about all the things that are meant to follow their own natures, while drowning out the calling of my own nature. 

 

If I allowed the world to unfold as Providence intends, and committed myself to improving my own character, there would be no limit to my liberty. 

 

The chains that really tie us down, the ones that bind the soul instead of merely the body, are invariably self-imposed; the losses that truly cripple us, by hindering our ability to know and to love, are consequences of our own confusions. Learn to discern the path, to stop blindly stumbling about, by finally removing the blindfold. 

 

Everything else does not have to be about me; it is sufficient that I have authority over myself. Let fame, property, and a long life come or go, and let me make use of any such circumstances to act with wisdom and virtue. Serenity and contentment will follow. 

Written in 12/2000