Epictetus, Discourses 1.25.8

“Nay, but I want to sit where the senators sit.”

 

Do you see that you are making a strait place for yourself and squeezing yourself?

 

“How else then shall I have a good view in the amphitheater?” 

 

Man, do not go to the show and you will not be crushed. Why do you trouble yourself? Or wait a little, and when the show is done, sit down in the senators' seats and sun yourself. 

 

For remember this, and it is true universally, that it is we who straiten and crush ourselves—that is to say, it is our judgements which straiten and crush us. 

 

For instance, what does it mean to be slandered? Stand by a stone and slander it: what effect will you produce? 

 

If a man then listens like a stone, what advantage has the slanderer? But if the slanderer has the weakness of him that he slanders to work upon, then he does achieve something. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.25 

 

I work from fatally flawed assumptions, and the damage is then compounded by not even being fully aware of how deeply those false premises are imbedded in my thinking. The smaller decisions are informed by the larger context of meaning, such that a foolish misstep at the beginning leads to being hopelessly lost by the end. 

 

I just need to reflect backwards in my chain of reasoning, and I will find that the stages become increasingly dim and distorted as I return to the source. 

 

It first seems fairly clear that I need to have more money, for example, because it will help me to acquire more property—and yet a moment of consideration reveals how the presence or absence of things has never made me happy or miserable, only how I choose to utilize the presence or absence of things. Could it be I have missed a critical distinction? 

 

Or I take it for granted that pleasure should always be pursued, and pain should always be avoided—until I think of the many times I have harmed myself by means of a pleasure or helped myself by means of a pain. Why am I confusing gratification with fulfillment? 

 

But I must surely be on track when I treat my social standing as a measure of my personal worth, since we all know that the best people are also the most admired people. I am then troubled, however, by the way I suspected that last line was a lie before I even finished writing it—so why do I recklessly continue to act upon it? 

 

Apparently, I need to go back and review my work; once again, those old-fashioned teachers in grammar school were offering some sound advice, in ways I did not anticipate. 

 

Sitting in the company of bigwigs does not make me a better man, and sharing in their amusements does not increase my character. Indeed, the very longing for such diversions, as if they were ends in themselves, is a type of self-imposed slavery, where a dependence upon conditions beyond my control overwhelms the integrity of my own judgments. 

 

I wonder why it feels like the demands of the world are crushing me, but they are doing nothing of the sort, for the demands are solely a consequence of my own surrender. I have failed to cultivate my first principles, and I shouldn’t be surprised when I can’t see my way past the tangled weeds. 

 

I have occasionally caught myself yelling at both my computer and my car, irked that my insults won’t make them conform to my will. They have no awareness, of course, though I can learn to be as resilient in my freedom as they are in their passivity. 

 

A stone is indifferent to slander or temptation because it doesn’t know any better, and I can be indifferent to slander or temptation precisely because I should know better. 

 

I think of the herds of feral cats who have taken over so many of Rome’s ancient monuments. They go where they wish and lounge about as they please, with no worries about where the rich or the poor sat in the Colosseum. No senator ever had it so good. 

—Reflection written in 3/2001