If this is true, and if we are not silly and insincere when we say that for men good and evil lies in the region of the will, and that everything else has no concern for us, why are we disturbed or fearful anymore?
No one has authority over the things in which we are interested: and we pay no regard to the things over which others have authority. What more have we to trouble about?
—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.25
This chapter is a direct continuation of the previous one, and while I had originally only skimmed over the first part, I apparently skipped this second part entirely, since it seemed quite new to me many years after my first exposure to the Discourses.
I was probably eager to move on to a new topic, as restless young men are inclined to do, and the bitter irony is that some close attention to this argument could have done me a world of good during the most turbulent part of my life.
I suppose I finally came to it when I was ready, as I do believe that nothing ever happens by accident, even though it may take the broader perspective of hindsight to gradually discern the patterns.
As is true for so many of us, I constantly struggle with a disconnect between my thinking and my doing. I was immediately drawn to the ideals of Stoicism, and I was sure I had it all figured out, but then I would regularly find myself caught in situations where the old attitudes would reappear, and I reacted just as I had before.
Yes, I do know that modifying a habit will take some time, but there was something else going on here. The initial instinct was to toss out the theory, complaining that it wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and yet I then realized how my thinking wasn’t completely formed to begin with.
I was settling for a vague apprehension, never bothering to put each step of my reasoning to the test, always jumping ahead in my fuzzy concepts when I should have been working on my awareness with a patient concentration.
And where my judgments were off, just floating around without any attachment to reality, my estimation of the good was blunted in operation. I was still afraid of being alone, or still worried about money, or still longing for gratification precisely because nothing about my values had really changed. In practice, I still assumed that fame, fortune, and comfort were somehow in themselves desirable.
Don’t blame the principle—blame your failed comprehension, and hence your execution, of the principle.
I regularly scoffed at the prospect of any meditation, though I ended up with my own primitive form of it. I began to stop myself in the middle of a crisis of character, and I would close my eyes to focus on untangling the benefit from the harm.
Would it help me to build my powers of understanding and love? Then it was worthy. Would it only get me caught in diversions about circumstances beyond my control? Then I must let it pass over me.
And you know what? With little baby steps, it actually worked. A flirtatious smile from a mysterious woman no longer inspired ridiculous romantic dreams, as I had a fuller sense of what love was really about. A bottle of Irish whiskey no longer beckoned me to dull my senses, as I grasped why running away was never an answer.
Where my consciousness could change, right down to the core, my behavior could also change. A brutally honest assessment of my priorities offered a liberation from caring about the things that didn’t truly matter.
Once I admitted how the only real good or evil for me was in the nature of my choices, and had nothing to do with the lay of the land, those dangers that once seemed so big now receded into the distance.
“This isn’t my business, and so I don’t have to manipulate it. This can’t hurt me, and so I don’t have to be afraid.” This is a mantra I catch myself repeating over and over. As I distinguish the greater from the lesser, so my situation is mine to tame.
Do I still struggle with that disconnect? Each and every day, but now I have an improved ability to get right back up again whenever I stumble and fall.
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