I will not.
“Nor in Athens.”
I give up Athens.
“Nor in Rome.”
I give up Rome.
“Dwell in Gyara.”
I dwell in Gyara: but this seems to me a very smoky room indeed, and I depart where no one shall hinder me from dwelling: for that dwelling is open to every man.
And beyond the last inner tunic, which is this poor body of mine, no one has any authority over me at all.
That is why Demetrius said to Nero, “You threaten me with death, but Nature threatens you.”
If I pay regard to my poor body, I have given myself over as a slave; and if I value my wretched property I am a slave, for thereby I show at once what power can master me.
Just as when the snake draws in its head I say, “Strike the part of him which he guards,” so you may be sure that your master will trample on that part of you which you wish to guard.
When you remember this, whom will you flatter or fear anymore?
—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.25
It can’t be said often enough: the Stoic life is only as possible or as difficult as I choose to make it. I repeat this one to myself whenever I become deluded about the weight of circumstances.
If I gripe about how I can’t do it, what I am really saying is that I don’t want to do it. If the priorities of my judgments are in order, the rest will follow.
Where I am, what I own, and who I know are just the settings for my happiness, not the causes of my happiness; the Peripatetic would here distinguish between the material causes and the efficient causes. Any old state of affairs, from the humble to the grand, can equally offer the means for living well.
Of course the force of habits, in one direction or another, will have a mighty influence, and yet who is ultimately responsible for consciously forming those habits?
I am hardly a vagabond, though I have now lived in a number of different places, among very different sorts of people, and none of them have ever failed me, even as I have failed a number of them. I may find this one convenient and gratifying, or that one inconvenient and frustrating, but whether I have become a better man in the process has always been a consequence of my mindset.
Gyara, or Gyaros, is a rather desolate island in the Aegean Sea, and the Romans were fond of using it as a place of exile for their most hated offenders.
Musonius Rufus, the mentor of Epictetus, spent some time there, and he made the most of it by continuing to practice and teach his philosophy, despite the scarcity of water and the absence of any refined society. In the recent past, the island housed Greek political prisoners, and it is now completely abandoned, home only to a population of seals.
As much as I would obviously never prefer it, what would become of me if I were locked in a supermax prison like ADX Florence, or ended up in a Chinese re-education and labor camp? The better question might be: do I have the necessary convictions to maintain my humanity? I decide that, not my jailers, wherever my guilt may lie.
My nerves are cracking, and my body is breaking—the flesh has its limits. It still remains within my power to shuffle off this mortal coil with a commitment to the virtues. You cannot hinder me from going out with my best efforts at prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
The tyrant, big or small, does not pose a threat to me; he is constrained to injuring himself. In turn, as I have learned from my many errors, I hope that he also learns from his.
Once I bind myself to a dependence on externals, however, I make myself vulnerable to his leverage. I can’t blame him for being the oppressor, for I have painted a bright target on my chest.
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