Epictetus, Discourses 1.20.3

Thus, where we think it makes a serious difference to us whether we are right or wrong, we take great pains to distinguish the possible sources of error, and yet when we have to do with our Governing Principle itself, poor thing, we gape and sleep and are ready to accept any impression that comes: for we do not notice our loss.

 

When you wish, therefore, to realize how little concerned you are about good and evil, and how eager about things indifferent, consider how you regard physical blindness on the one hand, and mental delusion on the other, and you will recognize that you are far from having a proper feeling in regard to things good and evil.

 

“Yes, but it needs much preparation and much toil and study.”

 

What of that? Do you expect that a brief study will enable you to acquire the greatest art? 

 

Yet the principal doctrine of philosophers itself is brief enough. If you will learn it, read Zeno's words and you will see. For it is no long matter to say man's end is to follow the gods, and the essence of good is the power of dealing rightly with impressions. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.20 

 

How important do I think it is? This alone will determine how much I am willing to pay for it. They can offer all sorts of incentives, or present the most stylish of pitches, but in the end my own estimation will hold sway. 

 

And so I might make the decision that I will bend over backwards to please the boss, since I depend on him for the cash, and my entire social standing hinges on his blessings. Will I leave him high and dry, however, if someone else promises to make me richer or more esteemed? 

 

Whatever the pressures exerted on me from the outside, my judgments on the priority of fortune and fame made the call. If I were to spend a bit more time on my first principles, I could just as easily conclude that integrity and compassion come first, and then I would be living a very different sort of life. 

 

I must take a deep breath, both literally in the flesh and figuratively in the spirit, and attend to my interpretation of the good, the bad, and the indifferent. I have it backwards if I settle for certain consequences without apprehending the causes. 

 

Most every day, I need to stop and ask myself: did I yawn in boredom at virtue, brushing aside questions about my values, while exerting myself tirelessly to increase my property? If I am honest with myself, I am often ashamed by the answer; I am too willing to trade human dignity for convenience, to go and take a nap when the real problems arise. 

 

I recently caught myself engaged in a debate with some colleagues, concerning which power of sense we would be most terrified of losing. Egos were clearly being bruised in the fray, and so dismissals and insults were flying left and right. 

 

It was only later when I cringed about my pettiness in getting involved: I can always find a way to live decently without my sight or my hearing, but I can never live decently without the guidance of respect. 

 

Won’t it be hard work to make sense of these profound issues? It will certainly require a lifelong engagement, a great deal of deliberate reflection, and a patient rebuilding of habits, and yet those labors will be so much more fulfilling than mindlessly running a rat race. At least I will then know something about where I am going, instead of being led about by the nose. 

 

Even so, it doesn’t, as they say, take a rocket scientist to figure out that understanding is the binding rule, that love is the highest law. All the rest is relative to these truths, and what a relief it finally is to recognize the things I had once revered as actually being morally indifferent. Knowing myself makes it possible for me to put the circumstances in their proper place. 

—Reflection written in 2/2001