Stockdale on Stoicism 39

So I took those core thoughts into prison; I also remembered a lot of attitude-shaping remarks. Here's Epictetus on how to stay off the hook:  

"A man's master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave." 

And here's why never to beg: 

"For it is better to die of hunger, exempt from fear and guilt, than to live in affluence and with perturbation." 

Begging sets up a demand for quid pro quo, deals, agreements, reprisals—the pits.

If you want to protect yourself from "fear and guilt"—and those are the crucial pincers, the real long-term destroyers of will—you have to get rid of all your instincts to compromise, to meet people halfway. 

You have to learn to stand aloof, never give openings for deals, never level with your adversaries. You have to become what Ivan Denisovich called a "slow-movin' cagey prisoner." 

All that, over the previous three years, I had unknowingly put away for the future. 

So when bailing out of my A-4, after the gang tackling and pummeling was over (it lasted for two or three minutes before a man with a pith helmet got there to blow his police whistle ), I had a very badly broken leg that I felt sure would be with me for life. My hunch turned out to be right. 

Later, I felt some relief—but only minor—from another admonition of Epictetus that I remembered: 

"Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the Will; and say this to yourself with regard to everything that happens. For you will find such things to be an impediment to something else, but not truly to yourself." 

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