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Saturday, February 24, 2024

Epictetus, Discourses 2.5.3


We act very much as if we were on a voyage. What can I do? I can choose out the helmsman, the sailors, the day, the moment. Then a storm arises. What do I care? I have fulfilled my task: another has now to act, the helmsman.
 
Suppose even the ship goes down. What have I to do then? I do only what lies in my power, drowning, if drown I must, without fear, not crying out or accusing heaven, for I know that what is born must needs also perish. 
 
For I am not immortal, but a man, a part of the Universe as an hour is part of the day. Like the hour I must be here and like an hour pass away. What matters it then to me how I pass, by drowning or by fever, for by some such means I must needs pass away? 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.5 
 
I suppose one can speak of Stoicism as a sort of “fatalism”, at least in a broad sense, and yet I would argue that there are far too many negative associations to such a term. Yes, while the Universe will proceed precisely as it will, and nothing can ever be outside the rule of Providence, this need not deny us our own freedom, or refuse us a role in how that plan is supposed to unfold. Our own contribution is not contrary to the grand design, but already contained within it. 
 
To rightly distinguish what is within my power and what is outside of my power is thereby both humbling and liberating. On the one hand I learn how small and weak I really am, and on the other hand I stand in awe at how I still fit into the whole. I think of a single musician in a vast orchestra, whose choice to play his part well is just as significant to the piece as the efforts of any other performer.
 
If it is something that Nature gives me to control, let me completely commit myself to acting with excellence. If it is something that Nature intends to decide on her own terms, let me gladly accept whatever she has offered. What may initially appear as a conflict is resolved through a cooperation, an awareness of why my responsibility is meant to exist in a harmony. 
 
Epictetus has a knack for picking examples that make me feel uncomfortable, though I imagine that’s the whole point, to knock us out of our old assumptions into a new insight about our priorities. I have an instinctive dread of water, and so the prospect of drowning on a sea voyage, totally helpless in the face of the ocean’s might, gives me the willies. I know other people who have similar anxieties about plane crashes and car wrecks. 
 
And the more I honestly reflect upon my fear, the more I realize it is a consequence of flighty impressions, not of sound judgments. My actions are my own, even as the circumstances march to the beat of their own drum, and my confusion of the one with the other has already been a source of too much grief. 
 
“What can I do?” That phrase may sound defeatist to some, but I can just as easily perceive it as a call to arms. There are times when I will feel, pleasure, and there are times when I will feel pain. Having been born to live, I am also destined to die. I am left to decide whether I will treat these occasions as blessings or as curses, and that is hardly an insignificant task. 
 
As odd as it sounds, I am relieved to hear how the possibility of drowning or disease isn’t the problem, and that I should focus on how well I have prepared myself to cope with them. That is something I can manage, because that is something I own. 

—Reflection written in 6/2001 

IMAGE: Ivan Aivazovsky, Wave (1889) 



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