Stockdale on Stoicism 37

On September 9, 1965, I flew at 500 knots right into a flak trap, at treetop level, in a little A-4 airplane that I suddenly couldn't steer because it was on fire, its control system shot out. 

After ejection, I had about 30 seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little village right ahead. 

And, so help me, I whispered to myself: "Five years down there, at least. I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus."

"Ready at hand" from the Enchiridion as I ejected from that airplane was the understanding that a Stoic always kept separate files in his mind for those things that are "up to him" and those things that are "not up to him." 

Another way of saying it is those things which are "within his power" and those things which are "beyond his power." 

Up to me, within my power, within my will, are my opinions, my aims, my aversions, my own grief, my own joy, my attitude about what is going on, my own good, and my own evil. 

To explain why "your own good and your own evil" is on that list, I quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago: 

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart." 

Long before reading Solzhenitsyn, I learned that good and evil are not abstractions—the only good and evil that mean anything are right in your own heart. 

But a greater realization is that of your own fragility; that you could be reduced as I was from leading over 100 pilots and 1,000 men to "taking the ropes" in a matter of minutes. This is an example of not having control over your station in life. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison