LIAM MILBURN: The Things in Our Power: Reflections on the Handbook of Epictetus

The Things in Our Power:

Reflections on the Handbook of Epictetus

Liam Milburn

 

The Enchiridion, or Handbook, of Epictetus is in many ways a sort of primer of Stoicism. It is reasonably brief, composed of 53 short chapters, and also fairly accessible. Epictetus lays out most of the first principles of Stoic ethics in this text, and offers very concrete and practical guidance not merely on how to think in a Stoic fashion, but how to apply such theory to the struggles of everyday life.

Over more than two decades, I would choose a passage from one of the Stoic philosophers in the early morning, read through it with great care, and usually write down my own thoughts and experiences on the topic at hand. These were never really intended for publication, but rather helped me to manage my own day with as much serenity and dignity as I could muster.

In the end, many of the passages and comments were joined together in A Stoic breviary: classical wisdom in daily practice, in the hope that a handful of others might also benefit from the original philosophers. The Stoic reflections series, based upon certain themes, were something of a further supplement.

I eventually found that, quite by accident, I had over time written a full commentary, often quite a few different times, on the complete texts of Epictetus’ Handbook, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, and Seneca the Younger’s On the happy life. Since these three texts have always been at the heart of my own Stoic adventures, I offer them separately for your consideration as well.

The translation here is taken from the classic edition of P.E. Matheson. I have occasionally made very minor changes in spelling, grammar, or wording, only to help make the text more accessible to the modern reader.

1.1. What is in our power?

Of all existing things some are in our power, and others are not in our power. In our power are thought, impulse, will to get and will to avoid, and, in a word, everything which is our own doing.

Things not in our power include the body, property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything which is not our own doing.

Things in our power are by nature free, unhindered, untrammeled; things not in our power are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, dependent on others.

Remember then that if you imagine that what is naturally slavish is free, and what is naturally another’s is your own, you will be hampered, you will mourn, you will be put to confusion, you will blame gods and men; but if you think that only your own belongs to you, and that what is another’s is indeed another’s, no one will ever put compulsion or hindrance on you, you will blame none, you will accuse none, you will do nothing against your will, no one will harm you, you will have no enemy, for no harm can touch you. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 1 (tr Matheson)

Especially in our time of technology and progress, we are convinced that we have, or one day can have, power over most anything. We speak of abolishing poverty, using science to make our lives more efficient and convenient, settling other worlds, even conquering disease and death themselves.

Stoicism can be a difficult philosophy to understand, let alone embrace and practice, under such conditions. Yet note that hand in hand with all our confidence in our abilities, modern man is often dreary, confused, and depressed. He has so much in one sense, but seems so lost in another. So many of us can’t seem to get it together.

Stoicism has, I think, an answer for this problem. It is in many ways the first principle of this philosophy that we need to consider what we actually do have control over, and how this in turn relates to our happiness. Modern man often feels like he could have power over the whole world, but he seems to have no power over himself. The Stoic suggests to him that he has these two fatally reversed.

Despite what we may think, we have very little power over the world outside of us at all. Nature will sometimes go our way, and sometimes not, but either way she will always do as she pleases.

Despite what we may think, we are hardly powerless over ourselves. We are, if only we so choose, the masters of our own thoughts, our own will, our own actions.

Consider that our happiness can only rest in what is ours, not what belongs to another. And the only things that are ours are our own selves. The fulfillment of my being won’t come from what is outside me, but will flow outward from what is within me.

Perhaps the very reason modernity can be so vexing is precisely because we have confused where our true power lies. We become addicts of our circumstances when we depend upon wealth, possessions, status and the illusion of control over the world around us. We then wonder what is still missing and why we still feel empty inside, but we feel empty inside because we have forgotten that what is inside is the only real thing that counts. I need not let all the rest rule me if only I choose to rule myself.

1.2. You are but an impression . . .

. . . Aiming then at these high matters, you must remember that to attain them requires more than ordinary effort; you will have to give up some things entirely, and put off others for the moment. And if you would have these also—office and wealth—it may be that you will fail to get them, just because your desire is set on the former, and you will certainly fail to attain those things that alone bring freedom and happiness.

Make it your study then to confront every harsh impression with the words, ‘ You are but an impression, and not at all what you seem to be’.

Then test it by those rules that you possess; and first by this—the chief test of all—‘Is it concerned with what is in our power or with what is not in our power?’  And if it is concerned with what is not in our power, be ready with the answer that it is nothing to you.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 1 (tr Matheson)

If anyone is to begin thinking and living like a Stoic, he will find that he must completely alter the order of priorities he may have been used to. I have always called this the Stoic Turn. This can be very difficult, not because of any complexity in Stoic thought itself, but because we will be struggling against our existing habits, and everything most people in the world are telling us to value.

As soon as I start thinking that the root of my happiness does not come from those things outside of me, the things outside of my power, but from what is within me, the things completely under my power, I will meet resistance. I may have been told and taken for granted that my career, wealth, influence, popularity, and worldly security were what make me happy. If I now begin to realize that all of these things may come and go, but that my thoughts, choices, and actions are what make me happy, I won’t be able to make that change overnight or without effort.

Yet the rewards are well worth the effort. I need to do nothing else than to alter my perception of values, basing my dignity entirely upon the merit of my character, and I can begin to realize the greatest freedom.

I can confront pain, loss, frustration, sadness, or all the sorts of burdens the world seems to throw at me, and simply ask myself: what is this really to me? If it is something I can change, I need not worry, because I can simply change it. If it is something I can’t change, I need not worry, because it does not concern what is truly my own. I can then take whatever is given, pleasant or unpleasant, and I can use it to improve myself.

I will feel afraid to lose all those trappings I used to care about, but I must simply remember: they were never important in the way that I thought they were important. If I can choose to no longer desire them as an end, I will not to worry whether I have them or not, and I can be content with putting them aside. I can reconsider the original impression.

No lover is distraught when he does not have the affections of someone with whom he isn’t enamored. A man who does not want to be a doctor will not be saddened that he didn’t get into medical school. So if I am not in love with externals, I will not mourn them. There will be a time of adjustment, as with any change of perspective, position, priority, but the benefits are priceless.

2 Remove the will to get

Remember that the will to get promises attainment of what you will, and the will to avoid promises escape from what you avoid; and he who fails to get what he wills is unfortunate, and he who does not escape what he wills to avoid is miserable.

 If then you try to avoid only what is unnatural in the region within your control, you will escape from all that you avoid; but if you try to avoid disease or death or poverty you will be miserable.

Therefore let your will to avoid have no concern with what is not in man’s power; direct it only to things in man’s power that are contrary to nature.

But for the moment you must utterly remove the will to get, for if you will to get something not in man’s power you are bound to be unfortunate; while none of the things in man’s power that you could honorably will to get is yet within your reach, impulse to act and not to act, these are your concern; yet exercise them gently and without strain, and provisionally.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 2 (tr Matheson)

We are quite familiar with the idea that if we do not get what we want, we should try harder. Indeed, a dedicated will must always be firm and resolute. Yet we must also remember that what we want matters just as much as how much we want it. A dedicated will must also be informed with wisdom. Are we even certain we want the right things?

If we desire all the wrong things, no amount of willpower and effort will make us happy. This is even truer when we want things that we could never possibly make our own.

The most critical moment of my life was surely the time I realized I could not have something I desperately wanted, and I realized that there was absolutely nothing I could do to change that. It was the beginning of my Stoic journey. For all of the agony this has cost me over the years, it was also at the same time a blessing of Providence. Nature had called me out, and was trying to call me back.

I began to see that the greatest misery awaited me if I wanted things that were beyond my power. Like many of us, I often lied to myself, trying to assume that all the externals would indeed make me content: the right girl, the right job, the right friends, the right home. These can all indeed me wonderful things, but whether or not I was ever to get them was really not up to me.

The problem, I realized, was this whole conception of “getting” anything at all. Could I not learn that whatever conditions came my way, the person who I already was, and everything that Nature has given me in my own mind and heart, was more than enough for me to be happy? I am not a being that is fulfilled by possessing anything at all. I am a being that is fulfilled by living well.

I would sometimes tell myself this was a cop-out, just a way to find contentment by lowering the bar of expectation. I learned that it was quite the opposite, because it raised the bar to a much higher commitment, a commitment to freedom and responsibility for myself.

3. What is its nature?

When anything, from the meanest thing upwards, is attractive or serviceable or an object of affection, remember always to say to yourself, ‘ What is its nature? ‘

 If you are fond of a jug, say you are fond of a jug; then you will not be disturbed if it be broken. If you kiss your child or your wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being, for then if death strikes it you will not be disturbed.

Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 3 (tr Matheson)

It is crucial to distinguish between what something is in itself, and what is to me and for me. If I can look at something as the former, I can avoid being trapped up by the latter. I need not remove the object of desire to be free of a dependence upon it, but must simply bracket my desire for it. This sometimes sounds easier than it actually is. How do I unravel the difference between a person in himself, for example, and all the reasons I desire that person?

I always remember St. Augustine in the Confessions, mourning the death of his friend, and him realizing it wasn’t his friend he was mourning about at all, but his own loss. I find this sort of exercise very helpful to avoid becoming self-absorbed. Something is what it is, regardless of whether I possess or enjoy it. In making the distinction, I respect things in themselves, and I am no longer making it all about me.

I have faced this with persons. I will often find myself missing another person to the point of despair. I then need to remember that my image of this particular person really has little to do with the reality. This is all about my perception blinding me to what truly is.

Let us say I am willing and able to differentiate what is from what seems to me. I can then also recognize that the good and happiness of another need not depend upon whether I am with or possess that person. I can learn to act both for my sake and for the sake of others, and not get these all tangled up.

I have also faced this with places, where my absence from them, and my memory of them, needs to be sorted out. I do a sort of existential exercise where I imagine the place without me there, and then laugh at myself because I am making myself present as an observer even as I try to remove myself from the picture. I realize that the place is just as good or beautiful whether or not I am there to appreciate it. That can give great comfort.

I have even faced this with things. I once lost a pen that was dear to my father, and I will sometimes suddenly imagine what happened to that pen, where it ended up, and who might have ever used it again. It quickly becomes clear that the reason that pen is important is not that it is a writing instrument, but because it is an unpleasant reminder to me that I was careless, and the feeling that I had let down my father.

If I can achieve such clarity of judgment, I can separate my longing from persons, places, or things, and I can therefore have a mastery over my estimation of persons, places, or things.

4. A will in harmony with nature

Then you are about to take something in hand, remind yourself what manner of thing it is. If you are going to bathe put before your mind what happens in the bath—water pouring over some, others being jostled, some reviling, others stealing; and you will set to work more securely if you say to yourself at once: ‘I want to bathe, and I want to keep my will in harmony with nature,’ and so in each thing you do; for in this way, if anything turns up to hinder you in your bathing, you will be ready to say, ‘ I did not want only to bathe, but to keep my will in harmony with nature, and I shall not so keep it, if I lose my temper at what happens’.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 4 (tr Matheson)

Just as I must distinguish between reality and appearance, something as it is in itself and something as it is to me, I must also keep my mind steady in the purpose of action, and not allow myself to be dragged off by distractions and diversions.

I had a teaching gig that actually came with a nice office, though this soon became my albatross. It was situated right by an open area where students would congregate between classes or during free periods, and even if I closed my door, I couldn’t ignore all their conversations.

What bothered me wasn’t that most of the talk was ignorant, shallow, or profane; I can be quite ignorant, shallow, and profane myself. What burdened me was the malicious way many of them spoke about how they hated the school, they hated their teachers, and they just plain hated learning.

Now most teachers in the humanities already know that it is a thankless job. The poor pay and administrative bungling alone is enough to drive one to tears. But I was deeply discouraged because I kept hearing the same complaints, and over time it tunneled into my own thinking and mood. Why was I doing any of this, if it wasn’t having any real effect, and if it wasn’t even wanted?

I could just as easily complain that the subway is too crowded, or that my lunch was served cold, or that my colleague looked at me the wrong way. I was complaining about their complaining, and I was clearly leaving my Stoic survival kit at home.

I need only know only one thing here to set me back on track. To live well and to live happily is to think, choose, and act according to Nature. It is good for me to give of myself to encourage wisdom in others. Whether or not I am liked, appreciated, or even listened too is a distraction from that harmonious goal. My frustration was not caused by the behavior of others, because that is hardly within my power, but rather by my own estimation, which is entirely within my power.

The events outside my door weren’t making me miserable, but I was certainly making myself miserable.

Because we are all creatures of mind, of choice, and of action, it is good and natural for all of us to pursue wisdom and virtue. Where my office might be, or whether I even have an office, or whether anyone even wants to pay me to teach, is all about circumstances that have nothing to do with the goal.

Instead of whining about all the rude people driving on the highway, I can calmly get to my destination, and simply learn to be a courteous driver myself. I control my temper, not the people who I think are pushing my buttons.

So too, I should worry far less about what others do, than what I can do, and far less about whether I am appreciated or loved.

I note with an impish grin how even many of the words I just used in the example above are not statements of what was the case, but how I felt about what was the case at the time: ‘nice’, ‘albatross’, ‘malicious’, thankless’, ‘tears’, ‘discouraged’. All of those judgments were on me, and not on others.

I shouldn’t need to do something well out of a forced defiance, but simply out of the joy of doing well, and I can choose to do that as long as I work with Nature and not against it. That is freedom and contentment.

5. Accuse neither oneself nor others

What disturbs men’s minds is not events but their judgments on events. For instance, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates would have thought it so. No, the only dreadful thing about it is men’s judgment that it is dreadful.

And so when we are hindered, or disturbed, or distressed, let us never lay the blame on others, but on ourselves, that is on our own judgments.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education; to accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun; to accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 5 (tr Matheson)

This has long been one of my favorite Stoic passages, and over the years I have pretty much memorized it. It has been quite a comfort when things don’t seem to be going “my way”, because it reminds me exactly what my way should be. It not only sums up so much of Stoic wisdom, but also does so in quite a radical manner.

Things will only be as good or bad as I choose to make them. I am the only cause for my happiness or misery, and I should never blame another. I need not even blame myself anymore once I am living with full responsibility for my own actions.

Such claims always raise eyebrows. We are all quite familiar with the practice of casting blame on others, perhaps because it seems easier to live that way. I find it actually to be a much harder way to live, because I am constantly enslaved by my circumstances.

We might also seek to accuse others out of sense of justice, out of righting the wrongs of our fellows. The Stoic, however, will point out that I can never right another’s wrongs, because that is only within his power. I can only right my own wrongs.

To take a Stoic Turn is to reverse the accustomed order of accountability, and it can be the most liberating of life’s experiences. The only thing getting me down is me, simply because only I can be in control of myself.

I had an experience both frustrating and humorous a while back, when a relative accused my young son of stealing his cell phone. I struggled with myself to tolerate almost an entire day of recriminations and criticisms of how poorly I was raising my child, until his wife discovered it under the pillow in their bed. After an awkward silence, he told me that none of this would have happened if I had done more to help him find it.

Now here I had to resist my feelings quite strongly, and to avoid telling him that I would be sure to check under his wife’s pillow the next time I was in her bed. I most certainly felt anger, but I needed to remember that his anger was his own, and mine was mine.

I spent many years going back and forth between blaming another and blaming myself for the most painful event of my life. It took me far too long to learn that the loss required no blame at all, not even regret. I certainly should not blame someone else for the state of my life, because making something of it is my job. And once I can own my own mistakes, I can transform those mistakes into right action.

If I genuinely and honestly fix a wrong, not by hiding it away or by making excuses, I’ve been completely responsible for myself. I don’t even need to accuse myself once I have done that. The stain has been washed out, because I’ve finally done my own laundry.

6. A handsome horse

Be not elated at an excellence which is not your own. If the horse in his pride were to say, ‘I am handsome’, we could bear with it. But when you say with pride, ‘I have a handsome horse’, know that the good horse is the ground of your pride.

You ask then what you can call your own. ‘The answer is—the way you deal with your impressions. ‘Therefore when you deal with your impressions in accord with nature, then you may be proud in deed, for your pride will be in a good which is your own.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 6 (tr Matheson)

Though I intended only to have a friendly and open-minded discussion, I once sent a very successful professional into fits of frustration when I suggested that a degree or a job were not to our own merit.

“Well, that’s just silly. I earned my degree from all my hard work, and I earned my job because I proved I was qualified.”

“Well, you hopefully did learn something at school, and hopefully you worked at it, and those actions are to your merit. But the degree itself was granted to you by someone else.”

“But I earned it!”

“No, they decided you earned it. Were they not just as free to give it to someone else who didn’t work at all?”

“They would never do that. They’re an important school.”

“Perhaps. But that’s entirely up to them, and not you. The status that goes with your degree, or any honor, like a job, or an award, is something other people give you, not something you gave yourself. Even if you have done something well, your boss could still fire you.”

“Then I’d take the whole firm to court.”

“Then it’s up to the courts, and not you.”

If we truly understand what is our own, and what belongs to others, we begin to strip away all the layers upon layers of externals that we had previously thought defined us. It’s like pulling up carpeting and finding a beautiful hardwood floor underneath.

It’s not that we aren’t worth anything at all. Quite the contrary, the Stoic believes deeply in the dignity of each and every person. Instead, it means redefining what gives us that dignity, which is all about what I do, and not what is done to me.

I have at various times thought that I was defined by my friends, or my job, or where I came from, and I still catch myself slipping into that sort of thinking. I may bemoan my lowly status in the world and compare myself to others far more “successful” than myself.

Then I just need to remember that I need to have a very different concept of success. Have I faced my world with understanding, with fairness, with courage, with self-control? No amount of external trappings can give me such things, because only I can give them to myself.

7. Missing the boat

When you are on a voyage, and your ship is at anchorage, and you disembark to get fresh water, you may pick up a small shellfish or a truffle by the way, but you must keep your attention fixed on the ship, and keep looking towards it constantly, to see if the Helmsman calls you; and if he does, you have to leave everything, or be bundled on board with your legs tied like a sheep.

So it is in life. If you have a dear wife or child given you, they are like the shellfish or the truffle, they are very well in their way. Only, if the Helmsman calls, run back to your ship, leave all else, and do not look behind you. And if you are old, never go far from the ship, so that when you are called you may not fail to appear.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 7 (tr Matheson)

We like to tell people how busy we are, from meeting that deadline at work to getting the children to ballet practice. These are entirely First World problems that come with entitlement, and I suspect there is more bragging here than actual complaining. We seem to think the more occupied we are, the more important we are.

Life will not throw dozens of competing tasks at us, asking us to complete them all as quickly as possible. Life gives us only one task, and that is to live with wisdom and virtue, under any and every condition. Let’s not miss the boat because we are buying souvenirs at the gift shop.

I once knew someone who would regularly say that she “took advantage of every opportunity.” She was baffled and dumbstruck when I asked what she was using these opportunities for. Was it about money, or about fame, or about feeling like an achiever? Or was it about practicing love and justice?

It is a cliché to say that life is like a journey, but the fact is that this is true. It is also a cliché to say that life is about the journey itself, and not the destination, and this is also true. These things are true not in the sickly sweet sense of a Hallmark card, but because Nature has simply asked us to live with excellence, whatever our circumstances may be.

Of all the things we are given, and of all the things we are asked to do, I find that the only way to avoid drowning in anxiety and frustration is to remember why I am here. It is really just about the priorities.

All the trappings and distractions of life, like a career, finding the perfect mate, buying a home, sending the children to just the right school, making the best financial investments, or looking grand in those vacation pictures, are really just the shellfish and truffles. Getting back on the boat means recognizing that I am here only to act with character and conviction, whether I am washing dishes or managing a hedge fund.

Life is going to put all of us in exactly the same place in the end: the grave. In the meantime, what Nature gives us is intended for living well. Let’s be certain we know what that means.

As ridiculous as it seems, I once spent a very difficult week in my life repeating the phrase “selfish shellfish” to myself in order to keep my actions on track. Thank you, Epictetus.

8. Peaceful happenings

Ask not that events should happen as you will, but let your will be that events should happen as they do, and you shall have peace.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 8 (tr Matheson)

This is yet another classic Stoic passage, of the sort that the Handbook is filled with. I do, however, find that it is often very misunderstood.

I read this to a 12 Step group I was leading one day, and I was met with an unexpected and violent backlash. I certainly didn’t think it any different than the Niebuhr Serenity Prayer, but the rest of our group thought differently.

“That’s fatalism! I’m just supposed to sit back and let everything happen, and not care at all? How is that peace?”

I don’t think there is any sitting back here, and there is certainly quite a bit of caring. To “let” things happen hardly means surrendering to them. It is rather all about learning to control myself about all the things I can’t control.  It isn’t about being passive, but learning to be quite active in the right way.

Stoicism has never been about resignation. Stoicism, after all, always defines a man by what he does, and never by what happens to him. The trick is to recognize exactly what can, and should, be done.

At a time when I worked in social services, I had two colleagues, both at heart fine people, who had very different views on how to solve their problems at work.

The first was always very concerned about changing situations, about making sure that all the right people were in all the right places. If there was a problem, the solution seemed to be that someone needed to be let go. I would always fear that I was on that checklist.

The second often seemed disinterested in the beginning, but I learned that his alternative model was to work with something, and to simply make right from what was given. He didn’t fire people, but made an effort to understand. He didn’t reject our clients or fellow workers, but adapted to them.

That is exactly what love is about. As soon as I say that I will only love under my own conditions, I have immediately ceased to love. Let us not confuse the passion of affection with the promise of commitment.

The world will simply be as it is. I have no control over most of this. Now I might vainly swim against the tide, or I might finally recognize the reality that I will never conquer the Earth. I may have no power over what is given, but I have all the power over what I can give.

I should never be passive, but I should certainly be active by working with and through my circumstances, and never against them.

9. Hindrance to the will

Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to the will, unless the will consent.

Lameness is a hindrance to the leg, but not to the will.

Say this to yourself at each event that happens, for you shall find that though it hinders something else it will not hinder you.

—Epictectus, The Handbook, Chapter 9 (tr Matheson)

One of the greatest obstacles to my living in a Stoic manner has been how I have gone about experiencing pain. I have faced levels of pain, especially the emotional pain of the Black Dog, which I have sometimes thought to be unbearable. I then wonder what I might be doing wrong, and how I’m missing that special trick to turn off the switch.

Speaking for myself, I have never found the switch, and that’s because I don’t think there is one. If I somehow managed to turn off my body, my memories, and my passions, I would certainly no longer feel pleasure or pain, but I would also no longer be human.

Attempts to ignore or numb pain will not remove it, but will simply encourage it to fester.

Nor have I ever known brute force to destroy suffering, as it always seems to cause more, whether in myself or in others.

I believe my mistake has, in typical Stoic fashion, been one of estimation. My assumption was often that pain must define me, but implicit here was also the assumption that I am only a creature of passion.

I began to understand that while pain is indeed a hindrance, and sometimes mightily so, to my body or to my feelings, it need not be a hindrance to my judgment or to my choices.

The question isn’t whether pain is a hindrance, but rather of what it hinders. If I can remember that who I am is far more than someone determined by feelings and appearances, then I can also learn that I must not let myself be ruled by feelings and appearances.

This isn’t just a matter of casting away unpleasant feelings, as that would be another form of denial. Rather, as with all circumstances that are in and of themselves indifferent, but depend for their value on how we make use of them, suffering can become a means for living well. I can mold and transform it if I do not let it define who I am.

This is true of pleasure just as much as it is of pain, and of any other circumstance that we will come across in our lives. Something may hurt or be pleasing, it may be convenient or inconvenient, difficult or easy, and whatever good comes from it will only arise from our willingness to rule ourselves.

That power to order my own thoughts and choices is not itself a burden or a hindrance, but the realization of liberty. When I have followed Epictetus’ advice to remember that I am the only hindrance to myself, I have also managed my greatest moments of peace and contentment.

10. Carrying the right tools

When anything happens to you, always remember to turn to yourself and ask what faculty you have to deal with it.

If you see a beautiful boy or a beautiful woman, you will find continence the faculty to exercise there; if trouble is laid on you, you will find endurance; if ribaldry, you will find patience. And if you train yourself in this habit your impressions will not carry you away.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 10 (tr Matheson)

I have attempted to fix plumbing, an old turntable, my car, and my online bank account without knowing what I was doing, and without knowing what tools I needed to make it right. The worst was an effort at fixing a buzz in the pickup of a Rickenbacker bass guitar. Oh, and my taxes, I forgot about the taxes.

I have also done the same with my own heart and mind. I may recognize that things aren’t right in my soul, but I have no idea where to begin. It’s much like having disassembled some sort of doohickey or thingamabob, and having no clue what I need to put it all back together.

Those far handier in mechanics than I know full well that one need not panic. All that is needed is to know what’s gone wrong, and what tools are needed to fix it.

Now many of us will buy all sorts of expensive tools to help us in our lives. Most of these end up in the garage or in the basement, along with all the exercise equipment, because we didn’t really need them.

All the tools we really need to improve our hearts and minds are already there within us, given to us by Nature itself.

I always start by trying to remember that I am fitted as standard with the equipment necessary to practice the four cardinal virtues.

Am I feeling the desire to control, possess, or consume? I can choose to practice the habit of temperance. This is not self-denial, but the ability to consider what moves my passions with a concern for what is good for both others and for myself.

Am I feeling fear in the face of a danger? I can choose to practice the habit of courage. This is not recklessness, but the ability to consider what threatens me by recalling what is properly my human good, to live with true conviction in action.

Am I feeling the need to be selfish and greedy? I can choose to practice the habit of justice. This is not wastefulness, but the ability to consider that what is good for me, and what is good for others, is never in conflict, but must be in harmony.

Finally, am I feeling confused and without direction? I can choose to practice the habit of wisdom. This is not intellectual posturing, but the ability to know that what is true and false requires nothing more than an open-minded humility about what is real.

No toolkit I can buy will ever beat the one I was already given.

11. Borrowed, not owned

Never say of anything, 'I lost it', but say, 'I gave it back'. Has your child died? It was given back. Has your wife died? She was given back. Has your estate been taken from you? Was not this also given back?

But you say, 'He who took it from me is wicked'. What does it matter to you through whom the Giver asked it back? As long as He gives it you, take care of it, but not as your own; treat it as passers-by treat an inn.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 11 (tr Matheson)

I remember those early years of the 1980’s, when anything touched by Michael Jackson seemed to turn into gold. The first single off of Thriller was a pleasant duet with Paul McCartney called “The Girl is Mine”, and I recall thinking one day, after I had heard it on the radio for the umpteenth time, that this was an odd phrase. How could anyone really “belong” to anyone else anyway? Isn’t this the sort of thinking that can get us into quite a bit of trouble? I would occasionally think the same thing about other love songs that used that other cliché phrase, “I need you.”

The catchiness of harmless pop songs aside, we do often take such ideas quite seriously. We think we own things, people, or situations, and then in our need for them, are devastated at their loss. The irony is that when I say I own something, I too readily define myself by what I say is mine. I come to depend upon what I possess in order to be myself. I am now hardly the owner, but I am the one owned through my need.

I understand this all too well, because I painted myself into that corner, both personally and professionally. Only a bit of Stoic clarity, to take that Stoic Turn, is needed to avoid so much loss and grief.

Consider that I can never lose what was not mine to begin with. Consider also that the only thing I can really call mine is myself. Put these two principles together, and we have the Stoic solution to loss.

We often think that we balance ourselves precariously between happiness and misery by frantically trying to keep control over the things we think are ours: our friends, family, reputation, career, wealth, amusements, or influence. Yet none of those things ever belonged to us, or were a part of us. Their comings and goings usually have little to do with us.

They most certainly do not define us, or fulfill us. Only what I think, choose, or do is fully my own. All the externals we crave will come and go, and then we grieve. All the internals we neglect can never be lost, and we would be happy if we only depended upon what is truly our own.

This hardly means we do not love others, or give ourselves fully to them. It is our own love we own, not those we love. I need never bemoan the changing state of the world around me, of all the things Nature lent me, because I still possess the good I chose to do. It is in this sense that you can never defeat the Stoic. He owns only himself, and borrows everything else.

12. The price of freedom

If you wish to make progress, abandon reasonings of this sort: 'If I neglect my affairs I shall have nothing to live on'; 'If I do not punish my son, he will be wicked.' For it is better to die of hunger, so that you be free from pain and free from fear, than to live in plenty and be troubled in mind. It is better for your son to be wicked than for you to be miserable.

Wherefore begin with little things. Is your drop of oil spilt? Is your sup of wine stolen? Say to yourself, 'This is the price paid for freedom from passion, this is the price of a quiet mind.' Nothing can be had without a price.

When you call your slave-boy, reflect that he may not be able to hear you, and if he hears you, he may not be able to do anything you want. But he is not so well off that it rests with him to give you peace of mind.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 12 (tr Matheson)

We spend so much our time and energy trying to make the world conform to our wants. It’s much like cramming the wrong piece into that empty space in a jigsaw puzzle, or if we can’t get it done the way we want, we throw away the puzzle and start a new one. Now how much time and energy do we expend simply on making ourselves right, instead of wanting the world to be right for us?

I am going to have to give up this need to make the world in my image if I wish to find peace. At first, this seems a terribly high price. Upon reflection, I recognize that I’m getting the best deal out there. I’m trading in something frustrating and unreliable for something serene and constant.

I have learned to measure the degree of my own progress in life by observing what I allow to disturb me, and what I am able to give up and rise above. Whenever I am angered by my circumstances, this is the warning bell that I’m not thinking rightly, and the smaller the object of my frustration, the greater the imbalance in my own thinking.

In the past, this passage was one that troubled me, in fact even offended me. Now I know that when I take offense, the problem is usually with me, and so I try to understand before I condemn. I understood the bit about being willing to give up my own security for my happiness. I once wrote “lose your greedom for your freedom” on a classroom chalkboard, and was met with complete befuddlement. No, what troubled me was the idea that I should be willing to bear a wicked son for my peace of mind. As a father, this just didn’t sit right.

I hardly think that Epictetus is telling us that we should let our children become scoundrels so that we can become happy. This isn’t about being negligent to be selfish. Rather, it’s about taking responsibility for what is my own. I can love a child with all my heart, but I can’t make him good. I can encourage him, teach him, try to inspire him, but only he can make himself good, and only I can make myself good. As soon as I allow myself to be destroyed by his choice to be wicked, I am now also myself wicked.

I will never make someone else good by being bad. In fact, if I can keep my own house in order, there is no better way to help others keep theirs in order.

13. Playing the fool

If you wish to make progress, you must be content in external matters to seem a fool and a simpleton; do not wish men to think you know anything, and if any should think you to be somebody, distrust yourself.

For know that it is not easy to keep your will in accord with nature and at the same time keep outward things; if you attend to one you must needs neglect the other.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 13 (tr Matheson)

Being the outsider and the oddball come very easily to me, not out of any virtue, but because my very disposition is that of a gadfly and iconoclast. I’m simply too contrary to conform. Yet I can use this annoying aspect of my personality to my advantage, if only I remember that I shouldn’t avoid being popular out of stubbornness, but out of a deliberate conviction that my merit is not measured by others.

I find that this isn’t just a matter of being indifferent to reputation, but quite often deliberately avoiding it. As Epictetus suggests, we should be very careful about being liked, not because being respected is in and of itself bad at all, but because of the reasons why people might be thinking well of us. All of us have the weakness of being impressed by appearances over content, and by people who put on a good show. Is that what actually made someone pay attention to me? If so, I need to be living more honestly and sincerely.

I always find that I am most drawn to the very people who do not desire recognition. I took my family to a medieval fair recently, where there were rows upon rows of performers and craftsmen, many of them putting on an elaborate show of their skills or trades. The largest crowds gathered around the biggest spectacles, but I found myself drawn to an older, unassuming fellow who quietly worked on a delicate glass painting. I watched and admired his art, and I don’t think he was even aware that I was standing there. He was absorbed in the joy of his work, not in the display.

People will occasionally take interest in my Stoic musings, and perhaps nod in some sort of agreement, but I do think most of us are hardly aware of how radical a transformation of self the Stoic Turn entails. I have had to try and teach myself that all the years of effort at making myself succeed by the measures of things outside of me was not the way to my happiness.

Though hardly with any bitterness or malice on my part, I have had to part ways with many people I love dearly, but who still think that the value of living is in the achieving of status and recognition. This hardly means, however, that the person who pursues a Stoic life is lonely or isolated. It simply means that my relations with others need to flip, such that I am concerned that I myself act with love, rather than the pursuit of being loved.

14. Master and Commander

It is silly to want your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, for that means that you want what is not in your control to be in your control, and what is not your own to be yours.

In the same way if you want your servant to make no mistakes, you are a fool, for you want vice not to be vice but something different.

But if you want not to be disappointed in your will to get, you can attain to that.

Exercise yourself then in what lies in your power. Each man's master is the man who has authority over what he wishes or does not wish, to secure the one or to take away the other. Let him then who wishes to be free not wish for anything or avoid anything that depends on others; or else he is bound to be a slave.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 14 (tr Matheson)

I have on a number of occasions tried to explain to others, in the most direct ways I can find, that Stoicism is not a philosophy one needs to be terribly gifted or educated to understand. It isn’t the principles themselves that offer me any obstacles, but my own habits and the pressures of social conformity that can make it difficult to practice. I just need to take off the blinders, though that can be easier said than done.

One of my quick summaries goes something like this, and I’m really just paraphrasing what Epictetus says above: “If I make myself dependent on the things I can’t control, I’ll be a slave, and I’ll be frustrated and miserable. If I make myself dependent on the things I can control, I’ll be my own master, and I can be free and happy.”

At those few times when my attempts at an explanation actually sink in, I usually see an immediate response of recognition. “Yeah, that makes total sense, and I’ve heard people say things like that before. They were usually the most humble and happy people I ever knew.” I may then hear a lovely recollection of a relative or neighbor who was surely a Stoic, regardless of whether he had read Epictetus.

The habits of corporate America were already creeping into higher education when I was a student, and I began to recognize certain formulas that were being used to “build the brand”. One of these was what I called the mock interview, where an employee confidently and cheerfully answers a certain set questions to help the consumer see the human side of the company.

I have to smile when I see one of those questions: “If you could pick one thing you wish you could do more of, what would that be?” I then expect one of two answers: “I’d like to do more to help the community,” and “I’d spend more time with my wonderful family.”

I knew a fellow in marketing a few years back who was proudly showing me one of these pieces online, so I finally asked what the Stoic in me always wanted to ask. I asked him why he just didn’t spend more time with his family, if that’s what he really wanted. What was holding him back?

“Well, my work just keeps me so busy, all the hours and all the travel, so I just can’t be with them as much as I want. I don’t really have a choice, do I? But I guess I’m doing it for them, so they can live in a nice house, and the kids can go to a good school, and they’ll have some security when I’m gone.”

For once, I didn’t press the Socratic point, because I judged it would do more harm than good, but I did think about it for myself.

If I think something is the most important thing I should be doing, I should simply be doing it. If I think something is getting in the way of what is most important, I need to leave the obstacle behind.

What is the good I can leave for my family? Love or money? If the latter is getting in the way of the former, I obviously can’t pursue both equally. If something, like the pursuit of a career, is taking control over what I should truly want, then I’m not really choosing my own life, but allowing others to choose it for me.

All of this then makes me honestly ask myself if I really do want mastery and freedom, a life where my control over my own conviction and character come first, or whether I am still hiding under the illusion that I will be happier as a slave to all those things outside of my power.

We all face that challenge, and how we respond to it will make all the difference. Marillion, some of my musical heroes, put it this way:

These chains are all your own

These chains are comfortable

This cage was never locked

Born free but scared to be

This cage was made for you

With care and constant attention

This cage is safe and warm

Will you die and never know what it's like

Outside?

15. A Banquet fit for the Gods

Remember that you must behave in life as you would at a banquet. A dish is handed round and comes to you; put out your hand and take it politely. It passes you; do not stop it. It has not reached you; do not be impatient to get it, but wait till your turn comes.

Bear yourself thus towards children, wife, office, wealth, and one day you will be worthy to banquet with the gods.

But if when they are set before you, you do not take them but despise them, then you shall not only share the gods’ banquet, but shall share their rule. For by so doing Diogenes and Heraclitus and men like them were called divine and deserved the name.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 15 (tr Matheson)

It took me many years to fully grasp how deeply obsessed our world is with acquisition and consumption. I had always seen greedy people, of course, and I had promised myself that I would never become like that, but I needed to be able to step outside of the whole set of social assumptions, to look at them from the another perspective, to recognize how thoroughly we define ourselves inside by what we conquer or achieve outside.

The grabbing and fighting over trinkets we see every year during the Thanksgiving shopping season may rightly seem barbaric to many of us, but I suggest it is just a rougher looking form of what we also see in business, politics, law, or advertising. Produce, compete, acquire, consume, and repeat.

Now I’ve observed some followers of Stoicism wonder if there can be some form of Stoic social teaching to alleviate such problems of greed, and I’ve been told by various Socialists, Marxists, Greens, Libertarians, or Anarchists that my insight means I’m well on my way to embracing their politics.

I can hardly deny others their solutions for a better world, but for myself, I have experienced Stoicism as a philosophy that is never built from the top down, but always from the bottom up. I have always thought it best to fix myself before I tell other people how to fix themselves, and I remain perhaps naïvely hopeful that if individuals chose to act with virtue, about the things within our power, the rest would rightly fall into place.

No, I can complain and protest about the greed and gluttony of a fast-food culture, which will produce nothing but resentment from everyone, or I can try to practice justice and temperance myself, day by day.

The image of our behavior at a banquet has long been helpful in keeping my own avarice under control. I was still raised to have good table manners, something I suspect has been skipped over almost entirely by the generation that followed mine, but my interest has nothing to do with the social niceties of how to sip my tea or use the silverware. My interest has to do with the relationship between what I want, what is offered to me, and what I then choose to take.

First, it is within my power to rightly know what I should or should not want, and I need never surrender that power to the pressures of others.

Second, I should never want anything that is beyond what I need, and Nature has made me such that I do not need to ask her to give me more than she offers.

Third, if it is always within my power to choose or not to choose, it is also in my power to take or not to take. The virtuous guest may thankfully accept what is offered, or he may even graciously decline. He may even rise above desire itself.

It is noble to say yes with self-control, nobler still to say no through absolute self-control. This, Epictetus says, is the true state of self-sufficiency of the Divine.

I was recently in awe of my teenage son, whom I expect to always be clamoring to buy and consume more things. We were standing in front of an elaborate sales display, and he calmly asked, “When was the last time anyone turned down a sale?”

“Whenever anyone refuses to be led by the nose,” was my reply, and I was pleased to see that he completely understood. He was perfectly content to buy nothing that day.

16. Not the event, but the judgment . . .

When you see a man shedding tears in sorrow for a child abroad or dead, or for loss of property, beware that you are not carried away by the impression that it is outward ills that make him miserable.

Keep this thought by you: 'What distresses him is not the event, for that does not distress another, but his judgment on the event.'

Therefore do not hesitate to sympathize with him so far as words go, and if it so chance, even to groan with him; but take heed that you do not also groan in your inner being.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 16 (tr Matheson)

I don’t do well during the holidays, not because I am by choice a curmudgeon, but because I am by condition subject to the Black Dog. I need to consciously prepare myself for the waves of pain, and learn to use my judgment to face my feelings.

As a child and younger man, holidays were full of joy, even magic. Now, Christmas just reminds me of a lost son, who passed right before. Halloween reminds of my lost love, just because her birthday fell at the same time. Easter reminds me of my Nana, to whom I never got to say goodbye.

Now I could moan and squirm, or I could try to wish it all away, and I’ve done that too many times. That’s what Thanksgiving used to be for. Or I could rethink the whole situation. I have now learned, over the years, that pain cannot simply be ignored. But it can be managed, and it can be transformed into healing. I can learn to take the responsibility to make the wrong things right, both for myself and for others.

I don’t usually control such feelings, but I can determine how I can think about them, and what I can do with them. Nothing that ever happened to me was ever in itself right or wrong, but how I estimate its meaning and importance is absolutely everything that will make it right or wrong for me.

How many times have I listened to someone’s life crushing experience, or he has listened to mine, and while we can understand the loss, we simply cannot empathize? This isn’t because it doesn’t matter, but rather because different things mean very different things to each of us. I can learn to respect that in someone else, even if I have not lived it as he has.

If I understand the source of distress, I can be prepared to meet it. Repression never works, since the force will simply go elsewhere, like all those times we yell at the kindest person at work because a spouse was heartless.

Instead, I can learn to mold it, to shape it, to rebuild it into something of use, to make joy out of pain, to make love out of hate. Pain has a certain emotional energy to it, one I imagine we all recognize. I can in my mind’s eye take that energy and harness it for the sake of something else, something that will bring contentment over misery.

This is hardly abstract metaphysics. It’s about hard practice. I have never told the story to anyone, but I once ruined yet another Thanksgiving for my family by running off to feel sorry for myself. I emptied my bank account to go on a good bender, the best one yet. Stumbling to my next watering hole, I ran across a woman crying on a park bench. She wasn’t young or pretty, but I was drawn to her. We chatted in the wind and the snow, and I learned that she had the exact same intentions I had, to wash away memories.

I honestly do not recall what I was thinking, but I called a cab, took her to the Star Market that hangs over the highway in Newtonville, and I did what I could to buy her the equivalent of a Thanksgiving meal. We took the cab back to her home in Watertown, and I made sure her family took care of her and the grocery bags.

No, it doesn’t end like a Frank Capra film. Her burly and tattooed son invited me in, in a very kind way, but I barked some dismissive comment. I went straight back to being rude, selfish, and downright miserable.

Yet that moment has stayed with me for many years. I have long forgotten her name, and I have no idea who that family was, but what I do recall is that small moment, however brief, in between one self-loathing and another, where I just took how poorly I felt and tried my best to turn it into something right.

Distress never needs to deny us the opportunity to love and to be happy. It can actually give us even more of an opportunity to love and to be happy. I hope to do it better the next time.

17. Working with the Playwright

Remember that you are an actor in a play, and the Playwright chooses the manner of it: if he wants it short, it is short; if long, it is long.

If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man.

For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well; the choice of the cast is Another's.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 17 (tr Matheson)

I never had the gift for acting, but I remember those who did, and I also remember that they would often grumble about the difficulty of following the Director’s instructions.

I always had the dream of recording music professionally, though I was hardly skilled enough to do so. Yet I always wondered about the influence the Producer had in making a record.

I did once have an opportunity to actually make a bit of money from writing, but I had to stare straight in the face of an Editor. I pondered about the difference between what I had written, and what someone else wanted me to write.

Director, Producer, Editor. Was life really meant to be filtered by the seller at the expense of the artist?

I was drawn very early on to a caricature of Stoicism, because it seemed it was a philosophy that would help me to get my way. Two things were wrong with that assumption. I thought it was about me, and I thought it was about a certain sort of way.

First, a philosophy shouldn’t be about what is convenient to me, but about what is right for me. I needed to conquer my own selfishness.

Second, I needed to stop thinking about philosophy as something that helped me to succeed in the world of competition, and more as something that helped me be fulfilled in the world of cooperation.

If you are an actor, a musician, or a writer, you know full well how hard it to swallow that ego. It means recognizing that what I am doing is part of something bigger than me, and I can be just as free and creative doing my part well, while also allowing everyone else to do their part well.

So it is in life, as informed by the Stoic principle about what is or is not within my power. There is absolutely no need for me to play God in order to be happy, and it isn’t necessary for me to order and direct every aspect of my world. It is simply enough for me to be content with what has been given, and to order and direct myself.

I have come to suspect that there is a far greater freedom and dignity in respecting that the world will be as it will be, than struggling and straining to make it in my own image. At the very least I have learned the freedom of humility, and the dignity of genuine responsibility.

If I struggle to live a long or prosperous life, a life of wealth, honor, or power, I’m not actually being a great man at all, because I am stubbornly worried about managing all the external conditions. In doing so, I’m neglecting the only thing Nature needs me to do, to direct my own soul, to get my own house in order, to play the role I am given, whatever it may be, with excellence.

18. Quoth the Raven

When a raven croaks with evil omen, let not the impression carry you away, but straightway distinguish in your own mind and say, 'These portents mean nothing to me; but only to my bit of a body or my bit of property or name, or my children or my wife.

‘But for me all omens are favorable if I will, for, whatever the issue may be, it is in my power benefit from them.'

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 18 (tr Matheson)

The Ancients understood that what we call luck is merely our ignorance of causes, and that what we call good luck or bad luck is merely how we perceive a benefit or harm to us. The same could be said for fate, or destiny, or prophecy. Things are as they are, they will be as they will be, and the only difference to us will be what we will choose to make of those things.

I have long had a frustrating melancholic disposition, either imprinted in my nature or bred by nurture, to immediately see bad signs. My past will drag me down, my present will seem tenuous, and my future will appear empty.

This has made the practice of Stoicism all the more important to me, not just because I can begin to see some good in things, but because I can begin to see that all things, however they may at first seem, can be good for me if I but choose to understand them rightly. Stoicism rarely works in half measures.

This is true, first, because anything that can ever happen to me will only affect my circumstances, but nothing that can happen to me will determine my judgment, my will, and my own action. The core of my human identity remains intact, if I only so choose.

Second, my judgment and will can always choose to make something good of any condition, even if this means only doing anything good in the face of an evil.

This seems naïve to some, but I suggest this is only because we still assume, to some extent, that our circumstances make and define us. Even as I might instinctively see doom and gloom, I have had to accept, quite begrudgingly at first, that I was nothing more or less than what I made of myself.

This can actually be quite terrifying to face, since it means only I am accountable for myself, and I can no longer blame the world for what I perceive to be all the wrongs I thought I had suffered.

I am certain that this is not just a pleasant abstraction, because I have now been using this attitude to great benefit far more often than I can number. I have managed to transform a deepest betrayal into a commitment to trust, loneliness into self-reliance, poverty into a newfound assessment on the essentials of life, physical suffering into the practice of fortitude, hatred or indifference into countless opportunities to commit small acts of love.

I have reached a point, and will hopefully be able to continue along these lines, where as much as something may hurt or haunt me, I now no longer wish it had never happened, because I can no longer separate the progress I have made, however sparing and humble, from these experiences. I don’t really need fortune to spare or coddle me, whatever those impressions may at first be telling me.

When the raven croaks, I need not assume dark times are ahead. I can remember that I will lose little of significance, and I will gain another chance to think, choose, and act rightly, whatever the circumstance.

19. Invincible

You can be invincible, if you never enter on a contest where victory is not in your power. Beware then that when you see a man raised to honor or great power or high repute you do not let your impression carry you away.

For if the reality of good lies in what is in our power, there is no room for envy or jealousy. And you will not wish to be praetor, or prefect or consul, but to be free; and there is but one way to freedom—to despise what is not in our power.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 19 (tr Matheson)

We assume we can acquire greater freedom by having more, when freedom is in fact found by having less. We think we become more secure by building ourselves up in the world, when security is in fact rooted in not caring for our place in the world. Freedom and security are never granted from the outside, but proceed from the inside.

I have become increasingly aware that most every single obstacle I face arises from allowing myself to be carried away by impressions. To succumb to anger, despair, jealously, fear, or lust is really nothing more than acting through a passion loosed from an understanding of what is good for me.

I have immediately allowed myself to be defeated once I permit this to happen, and getting out of such a pattern is much harder than falling into it. The trick to being invincible is learning to not even take the bait.

If I can understand what I should rightly desire, and therefore also what I should not desire, I will hardly be jealous or resentful when I do not receive the things I don’t even need. I can approach this from the inside out, by recalling what I truly require to be happy, or from the outside in, by recalling why the trinkets I crave won’t fill those requirements.

That a craving for externals, upon things outside of our own power, breeds jealousy is a sure sign that we are enslaving ourselves. I need only consider how the drive for money, power, or pleasure brings out the worst in all of us. But you will hardly see truly good men, and not the seekers of fame and reputation, squabble and bicker over their virtue and character. Resentment comes only when we define ourselves by the things that aren’t really ours to begin with.

If I am attracted to a person, to a position, or to a thing, I need to simply ask myself what good will come from my drive to possess them, or even if I can truly possess them at all? We want to get that girl, score that job, or own that car, but none of them will make me any better, or any happier. I am defined by my own actions, not by how I am acted upon.

I have repeatedly seen cigarette smokers, for example, driving themselves crazy because a long meeting is keeping them from their nicotine fix. The non-smokers simply can’t understand, because this isn’t something that they crave.

So it is with many things in life. The man enslaved to his circumstances will struggle to get a hold of what he cannot truly have, while the virtuous man simply walks away from such temptations. This isn’t because he is superhuman, or unfeeling, or gifted with a will of steel, but simply because he understands that he doesn’t need to want what he doesn’t already have.

He is invincible because he is free, and he is free because he seeks to possess only himself.

20. The root of outrage

Remember that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgment that they are so. So when anyone makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you.

Wherefore make it your first endeavor not to let your impressions carry you away. For if once you gain time and delay, you will find it easier to control yourself.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 20 (tr Matheson)

I’ve been on this Earth long enough to see a slow but steady increase in our modern sensitivity. We are more and more easily shocked, offended, outraged, and insulted. We speak of all the things that are unacceptable and inappropriate. We become increasingly impermissive in all of our permissiveness, increasingly intolerant in all of our tolerance.

I knew this had hit critical mass in my early years of teaching, when a young man came to my office full of anger. We had just been reading Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ in class, and he explained that he had been “elected” by a group of students to come and protest what we had discussed.

His concern? Nietzsche’s attitude toward women, and, if I understood him rightly, that the text seemed to ignore the needs of gay men.

I explained that I was no friend of Nietzsche myself, but that we were reading a wide range of modern philosophers to hopefully understand a wide variety of different arguments and conclusions. He would have none of it.

“I was offended, other students were offended, and we demand a public apology in class for you presenting an inappropriate text.”

It took all of my self-control to not tell him where he could stick his indignation, to not find offense at his being offended. I made it clear I would not apologize for encouraging him to think in ways unfamiliar to him, and he could complain all he wanted, but I would never compromise a commitment to an open mind or to academic freedom.

“Not everyone agrees in this world, you know,” I said. “I suggest the trick is learning to understand, not to condemn and censure.”

“No. We all need to fight intolerance,” was his reply.

I could hardly keep from breaking into hysterical laughter, once again barely managing my own frustration. Here was the pot calling the kettle black, though I’m sure if I had used that phrase, he would have accused me of being a racist, as well as being a sexist and a homophobe. The fellow was criticizing Nietzsche, yet being a little Nietzsche himself, the Will to Power in the form of upper class American entitlement.

Whenever I am offended or outraged, I have taught myself to stop time for but a moment. What is it all about? It usually has nothing to do with another person, or what that person said, but it does have everything to do with me. People, things, ideas, or words are not in themselves offensive. My estimation of them is the root of offense.

I recall the politician who was fired a few years back for using the word “niggardly” in a press conference. No matter that he used the word in an entirely accurate way; it was all about the offense in public perception, an offense born of ignorance.

No one ever offends or outrages me. I choose to be offended or outraged. Another man may be a bully, a boor, or a moral cesspool, but my own estimation is what drives my response. Will I choose to angry, or will I choose to heal?

If someone for whom I have great respect speaks ill of me, I am hurt. If someone who is on a totally different moral compass speaks ill of me, I might even take it as a compliment. The same thing may have been said, but it is only my own judgment that makes the difference. I have been called a hateful fascist by liberals, and I have been called a bleeding-heart socialist by conservatives. The context of my understanding can allow me to navigate that storm.

There is only one way to avoid being constantly offended and outraged. Take a deep breath, and consider what all of it is about. There is no greater harm here than responding on instinct and feeling alone. I invariably find that my own thinking is the root of the blame.

Quite a few people I know now seem to think I am becoming senile, because I will now pause for a long period before answering a question. I may indeed be heading toward senility, but my silence comes from the fact that I will take my sweet time to think about what needs to be said.

And I’m sorry if what I think needs to be said outrages you. What I said is on me, but what you think about it is on you.

21. Measures of magnitude, and gratitude

Keep before your eyes from day to day death and exile and all things that seem terrible, but death most of all, and then you will never set your thoughts on what is low and will never desire anything beyond measure.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 21 (tr Matheson)

This is another one of those Stoic passages that may at first seem morbid or pessimistic. Remember that for the Stoic, neither death, nor exile, nor any other circumstance is evil; it is our own estimation of them that will make them seem evil. Rather we should keep death, and things that seem terrible, in mind not to complain about suffering, misfortune, and loss, but to put all things in their proper perspective.

If I can keep my eyes fixed on the defining landmarks, I won’t lose my way, and if I can remember the scope and scale of those crucial circumstances I must always be ready to face, I will hardly sweat the small stuff.

I often think of this in terms of an order or priorities, or what I call a measure of magnitude. Perspective can be a tricky thing. The objects closest to us seem the largest, and those furthest seem the smallest. But when I look through the appearance to the reality, I will recognize that the mountain on the horizon is far larger than the hand before my face.

So too, the little vanities and obsessions of my daily life are as nothing in magnitude to the defining milestones. Considering how I will react to the possibility of losing everything external, or the certainty of my own death, is far more important than worrying about petty offenses.

I can now be far more secure in myself, far more serene, far happier when I have prepared myself for all the impressions that seem terrible. I learn that they aren’t terrible at all if I will only chose to manage them rightly, and I will be troubled by the trifles of life even less. I shouldn’t think about death to remind myself that it is bad, but rather to remind myself about everything that is good.

Measures of magnitude can therefore be opportunities for gratitude. For myself, I can find so much greater peace when I think how silly so many of my concerns have been. When we are young, we are frustrated when those older and wiser tell us something we consider unbearable isn’t quite so bad after all, but yet we come to the exact same conclusion when we have seen more of life.

Surely death is something I shouldn’t worry about yet, something far in the future? It may be, or it could just as easily be something that will come to me right now. I think less about death being painful, or that it will end my existence, and far more about how the knowledge that there will be an end to this life asks me to consider how well I am living that life.

Am I being a good man? Have I acted out of wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice? Have I been inspired by love in all things? There is nothing as helpful as reflecting upon my mortality to help me get my house in order. If I haven’t been living as I know I should, then I can still change that right now, and since I know that clock is ticking, there is no time like the present.

To think of death, or of anything that seems a misfortune, is not to fear it; it is to see the larger perspective, and to be grateful for every opportunity I am given, whether in a long or a short life, to live with excellence.

22. Philosophers and proud looks

If you set your desire on philosophy you must at once prepare to meet with ridicule and the jeers of many who will say, 'Here he is again, turned philosopher. Where has he got these proud looks?'

No, put on no proud looks, but hold fast to what seems best to you, in confidence that God has set you at this post. And remember that if you abide where you are, those who first laugh at you will one day admire you, and that if you give way to them, you will get doubly laughed at.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 22 (tr Matheson)

What defines the philosopher will mean different things at different times and to different people. For the Ancients, philosophy was seen primarily as a way of living, while for us Moderns it is primarily a professional exercise in academic circles.

From the Stoic perspective, the former would be a transformation of daily practice, while the latter would, in itself, be only an exercise in theory for the attainment of office.

If a philosopher wishes to gain honor, then he would most certainly put on proud looks, much like a celebrity performer or a politician. But if he is interested only in improving his own wisdom and virtue, regardless of what others may think of him, he will be content to appear the fool.

Our mothers would often tell us to never mind those who mocked and ridiculed us, because they were only doing it out of jealousy. Now I hardly know if the bullies and the blowhards consciously wanted what I had, though I do think they were made deeply uncomfortable by anyone or anything that was different from them. In a world where the pursuit of pleasure, fame, wealth, and power are all too common, the philosopher, in practice and not just in theory, will certainly be very different, and he will certainly find himself the odd one out.

Plato spoke of the philosopher returning to the Cave, not to fall back into ignorance but to help others ascend to wisdom, and being thought insane by those who still perceived reality through impressions. I must consider the source when I untangle praise and blame.

We too often forget that our highest calling is to pursue what is right and to remain firm in that conviction, regardless of the obstacles. Nothing else is worthy of respect. I have lived many such instances of struggle and opportunity on a daily basis. Sometimes I have muddled through, and sometimes I have failed. How can I praise friendship, while at the same time betraying a friend? How can I honor truth, and tell lies out of convenience? How can I respect justice, while also taking what isn’t mine to take? How can I admire courage, and crawl into the corner at the first sign of danger?

It isn’t rocket science. I need only hold the post, and keep the watch. It matters little whether others give you commendations or reprimands.

23. The diversion of influence

If it ever happens to you to be diverted to things outside, so that you desire to please another, know that you have lost your life's plan.

Be content then always to be a philosopher; if you wish to be regarded as one too, show yourself that you are one and you will be able to achieve it.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 23 (tr Matheson)

I still remember quite a few of my elders, many of them with all the trappings of success, telling me that I had to read Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people if I ever wanted to amount to anything. Many people no longer know of this book, but for decades it was the best-selling primer for rising in the business and social world, and the beginning of so much of the modern self-help movement, which offers us various fixes, formulas, and lists for making it in this life.

Even at a tender age, the proto-Stoic within me was troubled just by the title. Are friends really things we “win”? And is “influencing” people really the right way to approach any relationship? I would have been more comfortable with a title along the lines of How to love your friends and respect people.

But I read the book, mainly out of curiosity, and as much as I tried to give Carnegie every chance, it confirmed that this was coming from a completely different view of the human good, and therefore of how we should relate to others. As the years went by, I began to see how entrenched this approach actually was, both on a professional and personal level.

Carnegie suggested that we should change our own behavior to change the behavior of others, and by doing so we can win influence and benefits for ourselves. This seemed to me to be nothing more than manipulation, and later I understood Sinclair Lewis’ critique of the whole model: "smile and bob and pretend to be interested in other people's hobbies precisely so that you may screw things out of them.”

Despite all of my reservations, I still managed to misdirect years of my work life to this way of thinking. If I could find a way to please others, I thought this would circle back to me, and I would find all that professional security everyone was telling me was the end goal. I was warned that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, that I should appear willing to please, and I then would one day end up with people willing to please me.

I fell for a similar trap personally. I was in love with a girl, who it so happens ended up becoming a master of the Carnegie Method, and I found myself always trying to find ways to please her. I think I saw other people thinking this was love, so I did much the same.

The dilemma was that if I thought or acted for myself, I was shunned, and would sheepishly return straight back to obedience. If I was obedient, I was met with a whole new and more demanding set of requirements. It never seemed to end, though I now realize I was expected to be doing my own manipulation while being manipulated, and the best manipulation would win.

I, for one, will stick with Epictetus. I should concern myself with being a good man, and I should never seek to define myself by how well I have won the respect of others. Such living is hardly selfish if I think of the good man as one dedicated to justice and service, and not to manipulation and profit. I need to prove this only to myself, in good conscience, and not to others.

As soon as I am concerned with impressing another, I will gladly sacrifice the actual reality of merit with the mere perception, and simply the appearance will be enough to get me what I selfishly want.

I remember a photograph from graduate school, where a number of my fellow students were gathered around an esteemed visiting scholar, and they were all laughing at one of his clever intellectual jokes.

I was there that day, and I also remember how many of those same students in the photograph spoke freely about how much they disliked the professor, though they were willing to flatter him for their professional benefits. That same image was used for many years in university promotional materials, and it always made me sad.

I kept only one photograph of the lost love of my life, not as an object of adoration but as a warning reminder. My father and I were playing the traditional game of holiday chess on Easter Sunday, and the picture showed us duking it out as my beloved looked on with great interest.

It was only years later that I realized how feigned that interest was, and that she was deliberately posing for the camera and for the record here in private, in exactly the same way she did at public events. I had foolishly ignored all the signs.

I have slowly learned not to resent my former colleagues or my lost friend, and only because I have had to struggle with exactly the same temptations in my own choices and actions.

Both these occasions remind me how easily drawn we all are to playing others to bolster ourselves.

Like those old, successful men who told me I had to read Carnegie or perish, there was much to be found there in the world of wealth, influence, and appearance.

But I did have to learn the hard way that this will leave the mind and heart empty and cold. There can never be happiness and virtue when truth is compromised for appearance, or when love is sacrificed for convenience.

24.1. A Life of any account

Let not reflections such as these afflict you: 'I shall live without honor, and never be of any account'; for if lack of honor is an evil, no one but yourself can involve you in evil any more than in shame. Is it your business to get office or to be invited to an entertainment?

‘Certainly not.’

Where then is the dishonor you talk of? How can you be 'of no account anywhere', when you ought to count for something in those matters only which are in your power, where you may achieve the highest worth?

'But my friends,' you say, 'will lack assistance.'

What do you mean by 'lack assistance'? They will not have cash from you and you will not make them Roman citizens? Who told you that to do these things is in our power, and not dependent upon others? Who can give to another what is not his to give?. . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 24 (tr Matheson)

We are told that our lives need to matter, that we need to make a difference, that we must make our mark. These are noble sentiments, but what they mean hinges entirely upon what we consider to be a valuable life. It is much like our parents telling us to be good, though we aren’t quite sure what being good means.

I remember all the fine kids in college who were going to do something important with their lives. They were going to save the environment, ban nuclear weapons, fix the economy, or reform government. Since none of those things have actually happened, they clearly didn’t follow through. The one that wanted to become an environmental lawyer became a divorce lawyer instead, and the one that was going to go into government on a platform of integrity now sells insurance in New Jersey.

I would usually keep my trap shut when these conversations were going on, but one day I was asked straight out what I planned on doing with myself. In my usual flippant way, I suggested that I would build a log cabin as far away from civilization as possible, and whittle wooden ducks.

“Oh, and then you’ll write a bestseller about it, like that Thoreau guy? Dude, I can totally see you doing that.”

Jesus wept.

We see, of course, how easy it is to become scornful of human motives. My sardonic wit would take me only so far, and in the end I was left with exactly the same old question: what sort of life will be of any account?

The usual answer is that a life that matters is a life that has influence. To make a difference is to be remembered. To make our mark is to impress ourselves upon the world.

I’m fairly sure it was a combination of Marcus Aurelius and Ecclesiastes that eventually freed me from that illusion. Nothing I can ever do in this world will have any permanent influence, all of us will end up forgotten, and any impression I make will be quickly washed away.

This does not, however, need to leave me hopeless and without purpose. It is the mark of the pessimist to see only how something has failed, but the mark of the optimist to see how something can be transformed. To be someone that matters, to be a person of account, will simply not be found in the measure of the world around me. This is completely beyond my power. It will rather be found in the measure of the man within me. That is completely within my power.

I can move beyond flippant ways and sardonic wit to recognize that my highest worth is never determined by how many people cheer me as I walk by. I can be totally content walking on an empty road, or strolling through a crowd that ignores me, in the knowledge that I am more than a lump of flesh that will die and rot in the ground. I have a mind that can be open to infinite truth, and a heart that can embrace unending love.

Instead of asking what I was going to do to change the world, someone once asked me a much more important question. If I had the opportunity to offer any last words before I died, what would they be? The flippant response, that I would croak or gurgle before leaving this mortal coil, came to mind quickly, and also quickly passed. Without even thinking further, I blurted out a phrase from Ecclesiastes:

There is nothing better than that a man should enjoy his work, for that is his lot; who can bring him to see what will be after him?

No amount of wealth, or fame, or influence is going to make me a person of account. Those things are not mine to possess, and they are not mine to give. I possess only myself, and how I live with that which is given to me will make all the difference. My work in this life isn’t about making money or being recognized, but about living well.

I hardly think it an accident that Epictetus agrees with the Scriptures here.

24.2. Getting what is mine

. . . ‘Get them then,' says he, 'that we may have them.'

If I can get them and keep my self-respect, honor, magnanimity, show the way and I will get them. But if you call on me to lose the good things that are mine, in order that you may win things that are not good, look how unfair and thoughtless you are.

And which do you really prefer? Money, or a faithful, modest friend? Therefore help me rather to keep these qualities, and do not expect from me actions which will make me lose them.

'But my country,' says he, 'will lack assistance, so far as lies in me.’

Once more I ask, what assistance do you mean? It will not owe colonnades or baths to you. What of that? It does not owe shoes to the blacksmith or arms to the shoemaker; it is sufficient if each man fulfills his own function. Would you do it no good if you secured to it another faithful and modest citizen?

'Yes.’

Well, then, you would not be useless to it.

'What place then shall I have in the city?'

Whatever place you can hold while you keep your character for honor and self-respect. But if you are going to lose these qualities in trying to benefit your city, what benefit, I ask, would you have done for her when you attain to the perfection of being lost to shame and honor?

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 24 (tr Matheson)

Epictetus has just told us that we don’t have wealth and influence within our power. What is our response? Well, let’s find a way to go and get them within our power.

Perhaps we misunderstood. It isn’t that we don’t have them right now, it’s that we can never have them. To think that I can ever become the master of my circumstances, to possess things other than myself, is one of those big lies the world tells us from day one. As soon as I desire them, I do not possess them, but I have permitted them to possess me.

Linked closely to that lie is another one, that it is possible for me to maintain my character and pursue a life dedicated at the same time to wealth, pleasure, and power. The measure of defining myself by the excellence of my thoughts and deeds is diametrically opposed to the measure of defining myself by what happens to me. A man will give anything for what he loves the most, and if he loves money and influence, he will surely sacrifice his virtue for it.

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

A virtuous grasping man is about as possible as a faithful adulterer, or a fair thief, or an honest flatterer.

I have long appreciated Epictetus’ question: which would I prefer, wealth or a faithful friend? I can estimate both myself and others quite well by this standard. I have known many people who would choose the wealth, though they might not be very honest in admitting it, and I have known many people who would say they would like both, please.

The first person has chosen to dispose of his moral dignity, while the second is kidding himself. Both are the sorts of people best avoided, as hard experience has taught me.

Another way of asking the same question is simply to ask what someone would like to be. Notice how they understand those words will lead to very different sorts of answers. I knew a girl once, quite to my detriment, who told me that what she wanted most was to be a lawyer and a singer. Now that sounds perfectly harmless at first, but that was what she thought defined her, and she lived in a way that showed how she was beholden to externals. Another girl once told me she wanted to be the best friend she could be. I married her.

We might ask ourselves what makes a person be a benefit to society. Notice how often we are impressed by the rich and powerful, who often became rich and powerful precisely because of their greed and dishonesty, giving so freely of their bounty, and we say that they are pillars of the community. I, for one, prefer to admire the humble, honest man whose labors are so taken for granted. He is the real pillar of the community, not because he is rich in power or possessions, because but he is rich in virtue.

I have long lost track of the number of times I have heard people tell me that it is sometimes necessary to compromise integrity or justice in order to get things done. I have been told, for example, that it was necessary to tolerate a sex offender to save the reputation of the Church, or that it was acceptable to change a student-athlete’s grades for the good of the team and the school, or that a resume didn’t have to be totally honest as long as it got someone a job.

There are no victimless crimes, because at the very least a man has harmed himself when he acts poorly. As soon as a he has sold his character by acting unjustly, he no longer has anything of worth to give to anyone.

25. Paying the price

Has some one had precedence of you at an entertainment or a levée or been called in before you to give advice? If these things are good you ought to be glad that he got them; if they are evil, do not be angry that you did not get them yourself.

Remember that if you want to get what is not in your power, you cannot earn the same reward as others unless you act as they do. How is it possible for one who does not haunt the great man's door to have equal shares with one who does, or one who does not go in his train equality with one who does; or one who does not praise him with one who does? You will be unjust then and insatiable if you wish to get these privileges for nothing, without paying their price.

What is the price of a lettuce? An obol perhaps. If then a man pays his obol and gets his lettuces, and you do not pay and do not get them, do not think you are defrauded. For as he has the lettuces so you have the obol you did not give.

The same principle holds good too in conduct. You were not invited to some one's entertainment? Because you did not give the host the price for which he sells his dinner. He sells it for compliments, he sells it for attentions. Pay him the price then, if it is to your profit. But if you wish to get the one and yet not give up the other, nothing can satisfy you in your folly.

What? you say, you have nothing instead of the dinner?

No, you have this, you have not praised the man you did not want to praise, you have not had to bear with the insults of his doorstep.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 25 (tr Matheson)

We all know that feeling, that sudden and instinctive pang of jealousy when we see someone earning a reward we think should be ours. There is no reason, of course, we cannot simply be happy for someone if he has received a good, and we hardly need feel envious if he has received an evil.

On a deeper level, I ask myself about the nature of these supposed benefits, and the price I would have to pay to receive them. Why should I even want to achieve office and prestige, and what would I have to do to myself to attain them? In the simplest sense, the man who wishes to win the world must sell his soul. This is hardly an exaggeration.

To bask in the glory of thieves and scoundrels I need to become a thief and scoundrel myself. To win power and fame I must practice flattery, duplicity, and manipulation. I have now given away the only thing that ever made me worthwhile, my ability to act with integrity, conviction, and justice.

The end itself is an empty vanity, and the means to that end is the road to perdition.

Whenever I feel a pang of envy or resentment, I need only remember what is truly worthwhile in life, and that some prices are just too high to pay.

I have noticed how in the gilded halls of power and fame people will play certain roles based on certain patterns. There are times to appear compassionate, principled, humble, outraged, or regretful. One puts on different masks for different occasions, and the wording follows a certain script. We surely all know this, yet we seem to fall for it every time. It doesn’t matter if we really mean it, but it matters if we appear to mean it.

Epictetus is asking us if we wish to pay that price, of selling our dignity for favors. I just need to remember that having a seat at a banquet of flattery and decadence isn’t something I should even want to begin with.

I once had an interview for a job I was uncertain about, but the work did seem like it could be worthwhile, and the pay would have been quite nice for a man with a new family. The fellow whose assistant I would have become ended our conversation by asking me what reasons I had for wanting the job. I gave what I thought was an honest answer, but he then asked the same question, worded slightly differently each time, over and over.

Obviously, the answers I was giving were not the ones he wanted to hear. I was only told after the fact that he was giving me an opportunity to tell him how much I wanted to work with him, and that I should have praised his insights and achievements. The fact that it did not occur to me at the time that this was all about personality, and not principle, shows you why I was never cut out to be in administration.

I certainly can’t be indignant about not getting those sorts of rewards if I’m not willing to pay that price. I can remember that I have something of far greater price if I maintain my honesty. You can take the lettuce, I will keep my obol.

26. Walk in their shoes

It is in our power to discover the will of Nature from those matters on which we have no difference of opinion.

For instance, when another man's slave has broken the wine-cup we are very ready to say at once, 'Such things must happen.' Know then that when your own cup is broken, you ought to behave in the same way as when your neighbor's was broken.

Apply the same principle to higher matters. Is another's child or wife dead? Not one of us but would say, 'Such is the lot of man'; but when one's own dies, straightway one cries, 'Alas! Miserable am I!'

 But we ought to remember what our feelings are when we hear it of another.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 26 (tr Matheson)

Reality is hardly subjective, and the world is not what we would wish it to be. Yet we must understand how much our own impressions and judgments, unique to each of us, inform our perception of that reality.

What appears one way to my own experience may well appear quite differently when I see it experienced by another. There’s the rub. It is my responsibility to recognize that the pain or pleasure I may feel is hardly any different than the pain or pleasure another may feel, just because he is the one feeling it.

In a moment of complete despair, I once told the person I love the most that I would be walking away, and that she would be better off without all the baggage I had brought with me. It took some time of honest and humble reflection to realize how heartless I had been. I allowed my own self-pity to cloud my love. How might I feel if she had said that to me? I would immediately throw myself into the arena and fight her fight with her. I would never back away, I would never give up, because that is what it means to love another person.

Now why was I expecting that there was one standard for me, and another for her? Why would I think that I should not act in a way I would hope others would act? Why did I think my own experience was any less powerful than her own?

To think sympathetically, and even empathically, is to put oneself in the position of others, to think and feel like them, even to think and feel with them. We apply different measures, because we think we are somehow special. We aren’t. Everyone is special.

When I was a young pup, I felt like I was constantly going to funerals. Within a few years, two grandparents and two great-grandparents, all very dear to me, passed away. Some people say that children bounce back from loss easily, but that wasn’t true for me. Each one of those losses broke my heart, and that last one, the death of my Nana, my father’s grandmother, hit me the hardest.

I felt so miserable because she passed away over Easter, and I never had the chance to say goodbye to her. My father, quite wisely, had made sure I went to see her often, just to spend my time with her after school. She became like a newfound friend, because she listened to me, and I did my best to listen to her.

At her funeral, I battled through dozens upon dozens of people offering their condolences. I know they meant well, and I hold no grudges. But I quickly became tired of hearing the same tired statements. “She was such a good woman.” “I’m so sorry for your loss.” “You are in my prayers.” “God called her back.”

There was one fellow, and I have absolutely no idea who he was, that simply sat next to me in silence for some time. He put his hand on my shoulder, and when I turned to him, he simply said, “I know.” He squeezed my hand, and went on his way.

Now there was a man of sympathy, and of empathy. He was trying to see it as I saw it.

When my wife and I lost our first child, I was almost moved to violence when one person too many told me that it was all “for the best.” In one sense, this was quite right, because anything thrown at us by Nature and Nature’s God can be turned to good, if only we so choose. But that is hardly what someone who is grieving wants to hear.

I was boiling with anger, until I looked at it differently, another one of those Stoic Turns. Here was another human being, trying to give comfort. That I did not appreciate it as she intended it was entirely on me, not on her. I thought of all the clumsy ways I have tried to offer comfort myself, and I was able that time to say, with all sincerity, “thank you.”

I no longer think it is platitude to say that we should walk in someone else’s shoes.

27. Keeping our aim

As a mark is not set up for men to miss it, so there is nothing intrinsically evil in the world.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 27 (tr Matheson)

It is far too easy for me to say that a person, or a thing, or a circumstance is evil. This permits me to transfer my own responsibility onto others. It is not a person who is evil, but thoughts, choices, and actions may be evil. It is not a thing that is evil, but how I understand it may be evil. It is not a circumstance that is evil, but how I respond to it may be evil.

At the heart of a Stoic view rests the awareness that each and every thing, by its very being and purpose, exists as a part within the whole of Nature, and by doing so is good. We speak of evil only when something becomes out of harmony with other things, and thereby lacks what it should rightly have. In this way, the Stoic can agree with the wisdom of St. Augustine, that evil is never the presence of something, but the absence of what should be present.

If I can remember these truths, I need never fear failing in my purpose to live well, to lose my aim, to miss the mark. Each and every circumstance can always be an opportunity to practice what is right. The target is never out of my sight, though there are times when I may refuse to see it.

Let us say that I feel wronged. Perhaps another has chosen to act contrary to his nature, but this does not mean that I must act contrary to mine. The good life is still within range.

Let us say I believe I have suffered a misfortune. That situation will only be as good or bad I choose to make it, because my own estimation and action remain within my power. The good life is still within range.

I should not think of the “bad man” as some perverse blob of evil that has infected my world. I should rather think of him as a creature sharing in the same nature as mine. I can always still meet a wrong with a right, and I can try to help him do just the same.

My goal is never lost to me, because I can always choose to bring myself back into harmony with things around me. It was Zeno of Citium, the founder of the first Stoic school, who is credited with saying:

Happiness is a good flow of life.

And,

The end may be defined as a life in accordance with Nature, that is, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the whole Universe.

I have at times acted in such a way, sometimes without even quite knowing what I was doing, where I lash out at something I see as bad, or shun and condemn someone I think is evil. It may seem a quick cure, but it only compounds my problem.

First, it was never that thing or person that was the problem, but rather my judgment, and second, I am adding even further disharmony. The way to remove an imbalance is to add a counterweight, and the way to fix something is hardly to break it even more.

When I allow myself to be convinced that someone or something is irrevocably evil, I have already thrown in the towel. I am closing my eyes to the target, and I am doing so only out of my own malice and stubbornness. As long as I still live, it is always within my power to restore the good to something that has gone wrong.

28. Led by the nose

If any one trusted your body to the first man he met, you would be indignant, but yet you trust your mind to the chance comer, and allow it to be disturbed and confounded if he reviles you; are you not ashamed to do so?

—Epictetus, The Handbook Chapter 28 (tr Matheson)

Socrates liked to challenge us to consider why we upend the order of priority in our own nature. Why do we care so much for the external goods of the body, which are conditional and temporary, and so little for the internal goods of the soul, which are unconditional and lasting?

Epictetus follows in the same spirit. How odd that we are not willing to hand over our bodies, our property, wealth, or influence to others, yet when it comes to the way we think and decide, we surrender ourselves without question? We allow ourselves to be led by the nose, and we agree blindly with the prevailing fashions in ideas.

Whenever I make such an observation, I am often met by one of two different responses. First that this is surely too negative a view, or second, that it is simply proof of how corrupt we have become since the times of the Ancients.

I think of something as negative if it only points to the problem without seeking a solution. Stoicism offers that solution in the very stating of the problem, in asking us to consider what defines us as human, and which goods are the greater.

Perhaps modernity sells its soul in a greater degree, but any authority, from any time and place, will tell you how confused human beings always have been about what matters more or less.

All of this is only to be a doomsayer or a reactionary if we see the evil without finding the good. That good should remain the recognition that, through my estimation of myself and my world, I can turn myself around, and I can see that my greatest freedom is to rule my own thoughts and deeds. I can realize, as Socrates had already taught, that any external good of the body is only as good as the inner wisdom and virtue which guides and orders it.

I think we all wonder why we can be so shallow, so petty, so vindictive, and so greedy to own and possess. From a Stoic perspective, I would suggest that this is, first, because man is free, and, second, because of the weight of habit.

As creatures of reason, this means we have free choice to act according to our own understanding. When I can do what I decide, there is always the opportunity to decide poorly. Sometimes the things that are worst for us appear so tempting.

With time, our actions become ingrained, and for good or for bad, acting with habit becomes acting with little effort. This can be a blessing if we act with the habit of virtue, and a terrible burden if we act with the habit of vice.

If I have followed the poor habits I see around me, and then I have developed my own, it may seem like fixing my life is too difficult. I think of Colonel Slade from Scent of a Woman:

Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard.

Now here's Charlie. He's come to the crossroads. He has chosen a path. It's the right path. It's a path made of principle that leads to character. Let him continue on his journey.

I know that feeling all too well. I’ve neglected the better side of me for the worse, the higher for the lower, even when I somehow knew I was going down the wrong path, because it just seemed easier to let myself be led by the nose. It seemed easier to follow all those glittering prizes.

Of course, it wasn’t easier at all. I started to protest when it didn’t work out the way I thought it would. I never had a right to protest, because the fault was mine, not the world’s, and my life was disordered because I had chosen not to rule myself in my mind, but to be enslaved through my body.

The beauty is that Colonel Slade did learn that through Charlie, and he is now finally choosing to take the right path.  So it is for all of us. We don’t need to trade the dignity that is within us for all the false glories that are outside us.

29.1. Living by half measures.

In everything you do consider what comes first and what follows, and so approach it. Otherwise you will come to it with a good heart at first because you have not reflected on any of the consequences, and afterwards, when difficulties have appeared, you will desist to your shame.

Do you wish to win at Olympia? So do I, by the gods, for it is a fine thing. But consider the first steps to it, and the consequences, and so lay your hand to the work.

You must submit to discipline, eat to order, touch no sweets, train under compulsion, at a fixed hour, in heat and cold, drink no cold water, nor wine, except by order; you must hand yourself over completely to your trainer as you would to a physician, and then when the contest comes you must risk getting hacked, and sometimes dislocate your hand, twist your ankle, swallow plenty of sand, sometimes get a flogging, and with all this suffer defeat.

When you have considered all this well, then enter on the athlete's course, if you still wish it. If you act without thought you will be behaving like children, who one day play at wrestlers, another day at gladiators, now sound the trumpet, and next strut the stage.

Like them you will be now an athlete, now a gladiator, then orator, then philosopher, but nothing with all your soul. Like an ape, you imitate every sight you see, and one thing after another takes your fancy. When you undertake a thing you do it casually and halfheartedly, instead of considering it and looking at it all round.

In the same way some people, when they see a philosopher and hear a man speaking like Euphrates (and indeed who can speak as he can?), wish to be philosophers themselves. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 29 (tr Matheson)

I must always look at myself with complete honesty. As soon as I hide behind the façade, and pretend I am something that I am not, I have not only deceived others, but I have more importantly deceived myself.

Who am I? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What should I commit my life to? Am I willing to pay the price for that commitment?

Whims are not commitments. I assure you, that any real commitment will hurt, not because it costs me money, or time, or even effort, but because it costs me my whole being. However terrible that may sound, the price of a finite struggle is well worth an infinite reward.

This isn’t at all about just working hard, but rather about learning to work hard for all the right things. Many people will tell us how hard they have worked, but they neglect to tell us why it was worth working for.

Yet we are so often drawn to so many different things, like a cat in a roomful of flies. I may see something appealing, and I run after it. I see another thing that appeals to me, and I run after that. These are works of fancy, and not commitments. We are drawn by the sparkle, and then discouraged by the labor.

I think of all the projects I have begun, all the efforts I have embarked upon, and then left completely unfinished. There was nothing to blame but my own sloth, and my sloth came from my flightiness. I thought I wanted something, but I didn’t want to follow through.

I think that the way we acquire and dispose of our friends and lovers fits this pattern. We try people out, and when they no longer fit our immediate satisfaction, we dispose of them. We then try another, and another, like some perverse test drive, and care nothing for the consequences of our actions. We leave rubble behind us, and then claim a sick sort of victory.

Epictetus shouldn’t even have to tell us this, but there are really only two questions here: What is worth living for? How much am I willing to give for it?

So it is with philosophy. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I see people tell me they are “philosophers” because they have read a book or two, or taken a course or two. I have committed my life to philosophy for over twenty years, and I am still horrible at it. I suspect that the more things people claim competence in, the less they are competent in anything at all.

In my teenage years, one of my favorite geek movies was The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. The titular hero was a top neurosurgeon, particle physicist, race car driver, rock star, and comic book hero. This is just fine in fantasy, but a millstone in real life. The jack-of-all-trades is the master of none.

Epictetus isn’t just speaking about our choice of trade or vocation, but about the very path of our lives. If anything is even worth a hill of beans, it won’t be satisfied by half measures.

29.2. Living by full measures.

. . . Man, consider first what it is you are undertaking; then look at your own powers and see if you can bear it.

Do you want to compete in the pentathlon or in wrestling? Look to your arms, your thighs, see what your loins are like. For different men are born for different tasks. Do you suppose that if you do this you can live as you do now—eat and drink as you do now, indulge desire and discontent just as before?

No, you must sit up late, work hard, abandon your own people, be looked down on by a mere slave, be ridiculed by those who meet you, get the worst of it in everything—in honor, in office, in justice, in every possible thing.

This is what you have to consider: whether you are willing to pay this price for peace of mind, freedom, tranquility. If not, do not come near; do not be, like the children, first a philosopher, then a tax collector, then an orator, then one of Caesar's procurators.

These callings do not agree. You must be one man, good or bad; you must develop either your Governing Principle, or your outward endowments; you must study either your inner man, or outward things—in a word, you must choose between the position of a philosopher and that of a mere outsider.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 29 (tr Matheson)

A good life will require action and effort. It only remains for us to decide what we consider good, and whether we think it worth the effort.

I have seen many of those philosophy majors over the years making their way in worldly success. As much as they might like to say so in their bios and resumes, there is absolutely no way that was the reason they made their way in the world.

Do not tell me you learned critical thinking to make yourself important. Do not tell me you learned to open your mind to make a financial profit. These things are in contradiction.

Study the inner man, or sell yourself to the things outside of you. There is absolutely no in-between.

“But I am rich, and also a good person.”

Perhaps you are, but your wealth and power will never make you a good person. It’s entirely an accident.

“But I am rich, and I help the community.”

Perhaps you do, but your wealth and power have nothing to do with the measure of your character.

“But I am rich, and if you’d only worked as hard as me, you’d be the same.”

Now there’s the rub. This is what they really mean. They already know what they want, and they already have their reward. Most of them earned their status on the coattails of others, but that is neither here nor there. The life they love is one of show. We all acquire the wealth we work for, but all that matters is what we think makes us truly rich, whether in body or in soul.

Consider what it means to have a life worth living. Will it be the trumpets and parades that come with fame and fortune? Or will it simply be the tranquility from just having acted with wisdom, temperance, fortitude, and justice?

You will have forgive the foul tongue of an Irish philosopher, but I can’t be half-assed about the truth. My actions will tell me exactly what I really care about, and there are no half measures, only full measures.

As soon as I think it fine to love truth but practice lies, I am no longer prudent.

As soon as I think it fine to praise modesty but practice lust, I am no longer temperate.

As soon as I think it fine to send others into the struggle, but hide behind my own position and ideology, I am no longer brave.

As soon as I think it fine to speak of fairness, but I screw my friends and neighbors, I am no longer just.

I must be one man, not two. I must either be a philosopher, in the true sense, or a man ruled by what is outside of me.

I cannot both be a philosopher and a tax collector.

30. Right relations

Appropriate acts are in general measured by the relations they are concerned with.

'He is your father.' This means you are called on to take care of him, give way to him in all things, bear with him if he reviles or strikes you.

'But he is a bad father.'

Well, have you any natural claim to a good father? No, only to a father.

'My brother wrongs me.'

Be careful then to maintain the relation you hold to him, and do not consider what he does, but what you must do if your purpose is to keep in accord with nature.

For no one shall harm you, without your consent; you will only be harmed, when you think you are harmed. You will only discover what is proper to expect from neighbor, citizen, or praetor, if you get into the habit of looking at the relations implied by each.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 30 (tr Matheson)

In the bittersweet days of my youth, no party was ever complete without hearing Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” Along with other phrases, such as “Where’s the beef?” and “Don’t have a cow, man!” they became the slogans for a whole decade.

The young, of course, are prone to feeling independent, headstrong, and demanding, but I saw the absurd reach of not only the phrase, but also the whole associated attitude, when, many years later, I asked a neighbor to move a car that had blocked me in. “Uh uh!” came the impassioned reply. “What have you done for me lately?”

Stoicism would remind us that we are tempted to define something by what is done to it, when we should rather define it by what it does. Grammarians also tell us that the active voice is usually stronger and clearer than the passive voice. When teaching political philosophy, I always asked students to distinguish between rights, what others owe to me, and responsibilities, what I owe to others.

Should I see any human relationship in terms of my entitlement to be treated a certain way, or my obligation to treat others a certain way? Remember that the former is outside of my power, and therefore should never be anything that determines or defines me. The latter is completely with my power, and does in fact determine and define how well or how poorly I have chosen to live.

A Stoic, understanding the priority of action over passion, and of how I think and act over how others think and act, will now have a very different view of what it means to be a parent, a spouse, or a friend.

I always knew deep down that my parents were some of the most caring and committed ones you could find, but that didn’t stop me from complaining about some of the things they asked me to do. What I was not seeing was that my own preferences hardly defined their responsibility as parents, and that what I wanted given to me was not necessarily what they needed to give.

My first attempt at finding that companion for life was marred by much the same problem. I remained in good graces as long as I did what was useful, and when this was no longer the case, I buckled under the weight of the loss. Note that each of us defined our relationship by what the other did.

A true friendship of any sort is based on the ability to give, and not just to receive, to love, and not just to be loved, and to follow through with a commitment that never has terms or conditions attached to it.

This is why I see red when anyone tells me that she is happy being a wife because her husband is faithful, or happy being a father because his son is so obedient, or happy being a friend to someone who always offers a shoulder to cry on. I rather ask myself if I could still be a good husband if my wife was disloyal, if I could still be a good father if my son was a delinquent, or still be a good friend to someone who wasn’t always reliable. 

I could indeed have an angry father, or a thoughtless wife, or an ungrateful son. None of that should determine whether I am a forgiving son, a dedicated husband, or a caring father. If a friend has treated me poorly, this hardly allows me to treat him poorly.

Stoicism asks me to live this way not just out of obligation, but assures me that this is also the path to true contentment. As always, I can be happy if I rule myself, and I make myself miserable when I let myself be ruled by others.

31.1. Stoic Piety 1

For piety towards the gods know that the most important thing is this: to have right opinions about them—that they exist, and that they govern the universe well and justly—and to have set yourself to obey them, and to give way to all that happens, following events with a free will, in the belief that they are fulfilled by the highest mind.

For thus you will never blame the gods, nor accuse them of neglecting you. But this you cannot achieve, unless you apply your conception of good and evil to those things only which are in our power, and not to those which are out of our power.

For if you apply your notion of good or evil to the latter, then, as soon as you fail to get what you will to get or fail to avoid what you will to avoid, you will be bound to blame and hate those you hold responsible. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 31 (tr Matheson)

As that pendulum of social and philosophical fashion swings back and forth, it can be difficult to live in a way that stresses virtue. Even the term itself seems alien to so many of us.

Much the same can be said for a life that values piety. Respect is, after all, something we prefer to receive, rather than to give.

But these ideals need not be obscure or foreign to us, if we only understand them rightly. Virtue is not the cold conformity to duty, but the joyful embrace of living well. Piety is not resignation or religious posturing, but giving right respect to the order of all things, and ultimately to the source and measure of that order.

For the Romans, piety was understood in the broad sense of proper reverence, whether for family, friends, or country, but culminating in reverence for the gods.  The very idea, however, can seem disturbing, since it seems to imply some sort of blind obedience to invisible powers. It doesn’t help when some distort the concept of piety from one of humility to one of power and superiority.

Stoicism can be of great assistance in redeeming these ideals of virtue and piety. If the fullness of human life is in how we think, what we decide, and what we do, then virtue or excellence will be the measure by which we must judge ourselves. Likewise, if the fullness of human life is only possible in harmony and right relation with all things around us, then piety or respect will be the measure by which we understand ourselves as being a part of that whole.

Put aside, for the moment, the question of how we are to describe and understand it, but use simple common sense to apprehend that Nature acts according to purpose. She admits of order, and all things, to different degrees, participate in this fullness of being. Call it the gods, God, the Absolute, Providence, or the Universe itself if you will, but admire how all the parts only make sense with regard to the whole, and how we are only parts, and never the whole itself.

Now apply some further Stoic principles to the matter. That I have freedom is not outside of this harmony, but a very necessary part of it. How should I go about acting with my own freedom? All things, of course, have their proper bounds and restraints.

If I refer to the basic truth of The Handbook, that some things are rightly within my power, and others rightly outside of it, I will begin to see the proper path of life. Let me find what is good for my own existence in those things that I can rule, my own thoughts, my choices, and my deeds. Let me simply respect others things beyond my power as they are, each in their own appropriate place, and never demand that they conform to me.

Insofar as it relates to my own particular good, only my own actions are good and bad for me. All other things must be indifferent to me, and they become good or bad only by my estimation or use of them.

If I complain, then, that the gods, or God, or the Absolute, or Providence, or the Universe itself, has acted wrongly toward me, I am very far off the mark. I have expanded the scope of my authority to something quite beyond my own authority. I have tried to make other things be as I would wish them, and I have then, quite ironically, made myself God, the ruler of Nature.

The Universe does not treat us poorly, or unfairly. We choose to treat ourselves well or poorly, fairly or unfairly, by deciding what we will make of everything the whole Universe offers us. I must learn, kicking and screaming, that I am not the master of all. That is the root of all humility, reverence, respect, and piety.

Stoicism offers the simplest and most beautiful solution to what philosophers call the “Problem of Evil.” God, however you choose to understand that absolute reality, will never do me wrong. I do myself wrong. I will only grasp this if I can perceive what is rightly my own, and what is rightly under the authority of other forces and things. Whenever I claim more for myself than is mine, I am on the path to resentment and misery.

“You stole my wealth, my property, my health, my honor, and you are about to steal my life! You have stolen my happiness!”

No, my wealth, my property, my health, my honor, or my very life can’t be stolen, because they were never mine to begin with. My happiness, on the other hand, was always mine. In the immortal words of Lynyrd Skynyrd, “you can’t take that away.”

31.2. Stoic Piety 2

. . . For every living creature has a natural tendency to avoid and shun what seems harmful and all that causes it, and to pursue and admire what is helpful and all that causes it.

 It is not possible then for one who thinks he is harmed to take pleasure in what he thinks is the author of the harm, any more than to take pleasure in the harm itself.

That is why a father is reviled by his son, when he does not give his son a share of what the son regards as good things; thus Polynices and Eteocles were set at enmity with one another by thinking that a king's throne was a good thing.

That is why the farmer, and the sailor, and the merchant, and those who lose wife or children revile the gods. For men's religion is bound up with their interest.

Therefore he who makes it his concern rightly to direct his will to get and his will to avoid, is thereby making piety his concern.

But it is proper on each occasion to make libation and sacrifice and to offer first fruits according to the custom of our fathers, with purity and not in slovenly or careless fashion, without meanness and without extravagance.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 31 (tr Matheson)

When brothers fight over an inheritance, they are no longer acting as brothers. They demand what was never theirs.

We will all ask for what we think is good for us, and we will all ask to be relieved of what we think is bad for us. Whenever our desires and aversions overlap, we have the root of all conflict. Our usual solution, of course, is to fight it out, and to force our wants and fears upon others. If we don’t win, we sulk and complain.

The Stoic has a very different solution. Instead of insisting upon what I want, I can also simply change what I want. This isn’t a matter of limiting myself at all, but a matter of freeing myself of all the things in life that are completely unnecessary. This is only possible when I recognize what is rightly in my own realm, and what is rightly in the realm of others.

I will only blame God, and therefore be impious, when I think that God has taken something from me that I sincerely believe to be my own. The usual train of thought goes something like this:

I want this, but I don’t have it. Since God supposedly rules all things, it must be His job to give to me. He hasn’t given it to me. God is therefore unjust to me. I also therefore refuse to acknowledge Him.

Now how much does this sound like the bickering of spoiled children or the musings of jilted lovers?

This whole mess would be easily resolved if I properly understood what I should really want, and what the world really needs to give me. My own bubble of power grows bigger when I arrogantly insist on my way, and God’s bubble grows smaller, but it’s quite funny how I still blame God.

I regularly keep in mind that last recorded words of John the Baptist:

He must increase, as I must decrease.

We argue far too often about our own particular image of the Divine, which isn’t about God at all, but all about us. We love to relativize the Absolute. That is in itself a symptom of expanding our own bubbles, our arrogant spheres of influence.

Piety isn’t about how you cut your hair, or what books you have read, which direction of the compass you pray toward, or whether or not you wear a doily on your head. It begins only with reverence and humility. This comes from recognizing that we are a part of the Universe, and not the whole sum of it.

An old Jesuit once put it to me this way: “Be proud to be yourself, and bow to everything else.”

32. Prophecy and trembling.

When you make use of prophecy remember that while you know not what the issue will be, but are come to learn it from the prophet, you do know before you come what manner of thing it is, if you are really a philosopher.

For if the event is not in our control, it cannot be either good or evil. Therefore do not bring with you to the prophet the will to get or the will to avoid, and do not approach him with trembling, but with your mind made up, that the whole issue is indifferent and does not affect you and that, whatever it be, it will be in your power to make good use of it, and no one shall hinder this.

With confidence then approach the gods as counselors, and further, when the counsel is given you, remember whose counsel it is, and whom you will be disregarding if you disobey. And consult the oracle, as Socrates thought men should, only when the whole question turns upon the issue of events, and neither reason nor any art of man provides opportunities for discovering what lies before you.

Therefore, when it is your duty to risk your life with friend or country, do not ask the oracle whether you should risk your life. For if the prophet warns you that the sacrifice is unfavorable, though it is plain that this means death or exile or injury to some part of your body, yet reason requires that even at this cost you must stand by your friend and share your country's danger.

Wherefore pay heed to the greater prophet, Pythian Apollo, who cast out of his temple the man who did not help his friend when he was being killed.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 32 (tr Matheson)

We might think we are now too scientific to appeal to a prophet. Fine, let us appeal to a financial advisor, a political consultant, a legal counselor, a marketing guru, or a statistician.  It’s quite the same idea, but just a different setting.

I am told that fortune-tellers will always make their predictions so vague that anything could fit into them, and that analysts are so dodgy that anything will make them a profit. I will hardly judge if anyone truly knows the future.

Let us assume, however, that a prophet or an analyst, like Isaac Asimov’s “psychohistorian” in the Foundation novels, can tell us what will be. We think this would make all the difference in our lives. I think Epictetus is telling us that it should make no difference at all.

What matters, of course, isn’t what happens, could happen, or even inevitably will happen. What matters is what I will choose to do with what happens, now or in the future. My circumstances, past, present, or future, are entirely indifferent. My choices about them will be what make all the difference.

I knew a fellow in middle school, and I think of him with compassion now, because I suspect he was quite troubled, who one day brought in a whole series of old black-and-white pictures depicting the Chinese practice of Lingchi, the Death of a Thousand Cuts. They showed a poor fellow being slowly dismembered as a form of punishment and execution, one part of his body after another being sliced away.

I was horrified, and I still suffer nightmares from it, not because I am squeamish, but because all I could think about was the pain this man must have suffered before he died, not just of the body, but also in his heart and mind.

I know I’m an odd fellow, but I thought about how I would feel if I were ever to suffer such a horror. They say that kindly people would slip huge doses of opium to the victim, or that a merciful executioner might stab the condemned in the heart before the dismemberment, but that hardly makes it any better.

My father owned a wonderful set of German books about World War II, complete with striking photographs I have never seen anywhere else. One photo always stood out to me. Crystal clear, it shows a young German soldier, running across a field somewhere on the Eastern Front, at the exact moment he is shot. There is a combination of shock and pain on his face.

He was barely a grown man. Here was one man among many millions, but he was still a man. He had parents who surely loved him as they raised him, he surely had friends, perhaps a girl back home. And here he was, dying in a foreign land, all alone, well before his expected time.

That photograph would make me cry, and I think of it whenever I get too bellicose, or think that any man should have to die for those powers and ideologies that care nothing for him.

I share these memories with myself not to disturb, but to enlighten. What if I knew I would suffer the agony of that poor Chinese man? What if I knew I would die in a forgotten field like that German soldier? I don’t mean a hunch, or an inkling, but let’s say I knew it with certainty. How would this change my life?

The weak man in me, the one who measures his life by all the externals, shrinks in terror. The little bit of a Stoic in me, that bit I wish to nourish, shrugs his shoulders. I will only care about when, or how I suffer, or when and how I die, if I measure my life in all the wrong ways.

Give me more or less time, more of less conveniences, more or less pleasure and pain, and I should still say that any and all of it is just there to give me a chance to live well. If I knew that last scene, however gruesome, it should not discourage me, but only encourage me to get it right.

One need not be a Christian to understand how Jesus must have felt at Gethsemane. Please take it all away, but if that can’t be so, I will face this with all that is within my power. There is nothing greater than a man who will give of himself completely to love his friends.

33.1.  Right conduct

Lay down for yourself from the first a definite stamp and style of conduct, which you will maintain when you are alone and also in the society of men. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

The Stoic never sees any inherent conflict between theory and practice, but the Stoic can surely see how easy it is to wrongly neglect action at the expense of too much abstraction. Consequently, most every Stoic writer I have read will offer a very specific set of guidelines for daily living. Sweeping generalizations just won’t cut it.

We may order these in any number of ways, but I think the trick is recognizing that I need to do more than think and say that I should be wise, or virtuous, or decent. Such broad statements, as true as they may be, can far too easily mask indifference and a lack of commitment. I must also add to them how, in a very particular manner, I will confront and manage the many sorts of concrete circumstances I will face in my daily life.

For my own benefit, I always break these rules down to their basic elements, and I consider each part on its own merits. I do this not to be tedious, but to be responsible. I have lost track of the number of times I’ve allowed myself to be excused from a task because I have managed to somehow conveniently overlook it.

I further ask myself what all the variables will be when I make my everyday choices. What sorts of people will I be facing? What situations will I have to find my way through? What feelings may tempt me? What motives must I keep in mind? How will I face consequences that haven’t necessarily been convenient for me?

With this passage of Epictetus, I’ve always read it in twelve parts. This first part is telling me I need to not only think with decency, but also to live with decency. I cannot live a life of contradiction, or being different men at different times. I must become deeply aware of the walk matching the talk.

I am especially conscious of my own integrity. As soon as I am willing to say one thing in public, and do another thing in private, I have renounced the right to be my own master. I am grateful that Epictetus reminds me of this, and I must certainly be reminded, because it so easy to confuse the presence of character with the mere appearance of character. Whether many see me, or none at all, my actions should remain exactly the same.

I do indeed believe that love is the law, and that the exercise of the virtues is what will set me free. Now that theory of the classroom will have to be put into the hard practice of the trenches. Whether or not I am able to do that will determine whether I am a decent man or a fraud.

33.2. Right speech

. . . Be silent for the most part, or, if you speak, say only what is necessary and in a few words.

 Talk, but rarely, if occasion calls you, but do not talk of ordinary things—of gladiators, or horse-races, or athletes, or of meats or drinks—these are topics that arise everywhere—but above all do not talk about men in blame or compliment or comparison.

If you can, turn the conversation of your company by your talk to some fitting subject; but if you should chance to be isolated among strangers, be silent. Do not laugh much, nor at many things, nor without restraint. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

I immediately think of the old aphorism, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Perhaps we are uncertain, nervous, or frustrated by silence, but we all have the tendency to speak far too much. It try to reign myself in by remembering my mother’s example. Throughout her life, whenever she was asked why she was being so quiet, and not joining in the fiery conversation of the moment, she would calmly say, “ I am a silent creature.”

Words mean things, and I abuse them when I use them too lightly. In doing so, I disrespect myself, and I disrespect others.

I have also learned that not all topics of conversation are worthy of our time and effort. Petty speech, about vain frivolities, does nothing but reveal my own inner vanity and frivolity. I am hardly more important or relevant in this life the more I make myself heard, and I am hardly wiser or better when I pontificate about shallow interests.

Even more importantly, petty speech deeply harms justice when it takes on the form of gossip and slander. I know how tempting it is to blame or praise others, but this is usually done not out of respect at all, but rather from self-importance or flattery. I lower or raise others to glorify myself.

I have often found that as soon as I am qualifying a statement “with all due respect,” or “he’s a wonderful fellow, but . . .” the chances are good that I am really just playing games.

I spent too many years thinking I was in a friendship with someone because we shared so well in putting down other people. I did not learn quickly enough that I was being put down just as much when I was out of earshot. Such an unpleasant memory reminds me again how much our words mean.

Because I become too easily impassioned by principle, and therefore will not suffer fools gladly, I will sometimes think it best to challenge the boasting and pettiness of others. I have done nothing, of course, but become boastful and petty myself.

If a friendly change of topic cannot steer a conversation right by good example, it is often best to say nothing at all. If I am frustrated by so many words that mean so little, I should start at home and simply use my own words more wisely

Finally, laughter in the joy of fellowship is one thing, but laughter from dismissal and ridicule is quite another. I find the latter far more common than the former, so I try to laugh sparingly. A dozen mocking snorts can never hold a candle to a single friendly smile.

33.3. Right promises

. . . Refuse to take oaths, altogether if that be possible, but if not, as far as circumstances allow. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

We think of “swearing” as simply the use of foul language, but to properly “swear” refers to the offer of a solemn oath, an affirmation, a promise, or a vow. Such statements are made upon the guarantee of a certain name or authority we claim to hold as sacred or dear.

Now just as we so freely make light use of obscene language, so too we often make light use of such words of promise. Think of how often we promise on God, on our country, on our friendship, or on our honor that something is true, or that our commitment is real. Now think of how often we truly mean it.

Epictetus isn’t telling us that we shouldn’t make promises, but rather that we should make those promises rightly, based upon our conviction, and not upon empty show. I can imagine the Romans saying “by Jupiter” just as often as we now thoughtlessly say “Oh my God.”

Words without commitment are lies, and we too freely use words loosed from their meanings. I should not think that a man who swears will necessarily mean what he says, but I should think that a man of character will certainly mean what he says. I remember the words of Aeschylus:

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

How easily one of my heroes, St. Thomas More, could have mouthed the words of the Oath of Supremacy and the Oath of Succession in 1534, and escaped with his life and his position intact. Like a clever child, he might just have crossed his fingers behind his back. Yet he knew that he could not swear upon the name of a king who was asking him to go against his own conscience. Conviction won out over words that day.

In right Stoic manner, a man should hardly have to appeal to the power of another to guarantee his own promise. When I was younger, men of the old school still told me that a man without his word had nothing. When I grew older, I began to see how lightly people spoke words of allegiance and loyalty, and how easily they broke them. This, in turn, helped me to take my own commitments far more seriously.

Engaging with Stoicism allowed me to give all of this a deeper context. If, as Epictetus says, I rule only myself, then I surely cannot sell out this responsibility for anything else. I am certainly going beyond the pale when I place greater weight in the name of something else than I do in my own conviction.

Historians will sometimes argue that the point of no return in Nazi Germany was not the party’s electoral victories, or all the legal machinations that followed, but when the officers of the Wehrmacht swore an oath not to their own conscience, or even to their country or its constitution, but to the person of Adolf Hitler. Under a Stoic light, it could be said that this was the moment when they surrendered the rule of themselves through the name of another.

I must always ask myself not only what I am promising, but also upon what grounds I am promising it. By all means, let us certainly show right reverence to our kings and to our gods. But let us also reserve the final authority of our own promises to our own character. I should hardly ever pass the weight of so great and noble a responsibility on to another.

33.4. Right company

. . . Refuse the entertainments of strangers and the vulgar.

But if occasion arise to accept them, then strain every nerve to avoid lapsing into the state of the vulgar.

For know that, if your comrade has a stain on him, he that associates with him must needs share the stain, even though he be clean in himself. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

I would be filled with rage when my elders told me I should always keep good company. I knew better, of course, because I was certain that I was may own man, and I would never let my companions influence the way I thought or lived. If I had known anything about Stoic thought back then, I would surely have appealed to Epictetus. I rule myself, I would have said, and others do not rule me.

Why was it, then, that when I spent time with a rowdy crowd in middle school, I was quite rowdy myself? Why did I start smoking in high school as soon as I hung around on a park bench with all the other smokers? Why did I become more heartless and calculating when I fell in love with a heartless and calculating girl? Why did I drink like a fish whenever I was around all the lounge lizards?

I can parade all the proud theory I like, but the practice of daily living and the grounding of common sense will always remind me that birds of a feather flock together. This isn’t because I’m not free, or do not rule my own choices and actions, but is rather about the very causes and effects of my own decisions.

No one ever forced me to spend time with the seedy set, or made me fall in love with the wrong girl. There was already something about me that wanted to be shifty instead of honest, dismissive instead of kind. That I chose my company poorly reflected less on them, and more on what was already brewing in my own heart.

And once I was in that world, no one ever forced me to start thinking and living in a certain way. I chose to do so entirely of my own accord, precisely because I freely allowed others to influence me. No one broke down the door. I unlocked and opened it entirely by myself.

I have indeed always ruled myself, as does any man, but my rule is also something I can freely surrender, and few things will encourage us to choose vice than being surrounded by it. We defer to the default.

Even if I had the incredible strength to remain pure in thought and deed, association is itself a choice, and with any choice comes a responsibility.

If I stand by idly while one man robs another, though I have done no robbing, I am hardly blameless. If I spend my time with friends who deceive, betray, and abuse, though I may not actually be doing these things myself, I am also hardly blameless. We carry each other.

It took some hard knocks to realize that my elders, and Epictetus, were always quite right. I need only look at my own friends, virtuous or vulgar, and I can immediately learn quite a bit about myself.

33.5. Right possessions

. . . For your body take just so much as your bare need requires, such as food, drink, clothing, house, servants, but cut down all that tends to luxury and outward show. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

I was pleasantly surprised the other day to overhear someone uttering those wonderful words of G.K. Chesterton:

There are two ways to get enough: One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

The only problem was that the man was actually wearing a Rolex, and had just been bragging about his new country club membership. I suspect he was applying this rule to others, though not to himself.

The Stoic hardly needs to be a pauper, and circumstances may even put him in high places. What will set him apart is his attitude toward his possessions, such that he seeks only to make use of what is necessary, and he recognizes that Nature has offered even these things only on loan.

I have never been rich, and I’m fairly sure I never will be. Yet whenever I have had even a bit more than I need, I always seem to raise the bar on what I think I need. Necessity grows into luxury, and I begin to confuse need with greed. It becomes far too easy to condemn the rich, but the problem has never been being rich at all, but thinking rich.

I find it very helpful to perform a certain thought exercise every so often, which then spills over into the way I choose to live. When circumstances seem oppressive, I ask myself what I really need to be happy. What is quite enlightening and useful is how sparse and humble that list can really be.

I push the limits as far as I can. “But without the clothes on my back I will freeze, and without some food in my belly I will starve!” Then I’ll freeze and starve. Death will come in any event, and the only thing I really need at all is to face such things rightly.

I recently caught myself saying that I couldn’t live without my music. Of course I could live without it, and if you took away my ridiculous record collection, I could play it myself, and if you took away my instruments, I could still whistle a tune. Keep me from whistling, and I can play music in my own head, which is what I do most of the day in any event. I am, of course, my only possession.

I take this to the point where I recognize that if I can’t imagine being without something, and be willing to give it up at a moment’s notice, I’m wanting it too much. I will thankfully take what Nature offers me to live well, but I should take no more. If I also remember that I am only borrowing such goods, I will hardly resent returning them. This can transform me from a creature of entitlement to a creature of gratitude.

33.6. Right passions

. . . Avoid impurity to the utmost of your power before marriage, but if you indulge your passion, let it be done lawfully.

But do not be offensive or censorious to those who indulge it, and do not always be bringing up your own chastity.

If some one tells you that so and so speaks ill of you, do not defend yourself against what he says, but answer, 'He did not know my other faults, or he would not have mentioned these alone.'. . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

My own concerns about the sexual mores of our time do not come from a frustrated hatred of the flesh, or from the reactionary belief that sexuality exists only as an unfortunate but necessary means to produce a few more copies of myself on the face of this Earth.

My concern has long been that we have turned our liberation into selfishness. We separate our desires from the commitment of love, and in the process reduce others to a means for our gratification. Once it becomes all about the taking, and abandons all the giving, we treat others as objects, and not as persons.

In my younger years, I would hear both men and women talk about “getting a piece of that”, and I would cringe. The phrases may change, but the attitude isn’t all that different. We can make it all appear right and proper, of course, but when sex is just about seeking pleasure, which so easily transforms into the exercise of control and power, we abuse others just as we abuse ourselves.

We cannot help but somehow recognize that so deep a personal intimacy brings with it so deep a personal consequence. I need only look around me to see the intense damage done by lazy affections.

In my early teaching years, I knew a young lady who spoke proudly of her “no-strings-attached” affair, and all the benefits she thought it brought her. A year later she was sobbing uncontrollably, and asking why she had let herself love the fellow in question. I did my best to help her through it, though I regret that it was hardly enough.

She learned it the hard way, as so many of us do, and as I had to learn myself, that hearts are to be cherished, and not to be played with.

Epictetus also understands that it is the mark of a frustrated and miserable person to be too quick to accuse and condemn others. I should worry far more about maintaining my own chastity than I should about policing the chastity of others, because I should readily understand all the temptations and pitfalls that come our way.

It helps little if I tell you that you are broken, without offering my friendship to help you heal those wounds.

If love is about a commitment to others, I will hardly be practicing that love, either if I abuse others by sleeping with them carelessly, or if I abuse others by damning them carelessly. I need not be promiscuous or a prude. I just need to show compassion and concern.

I was once a bit enamored of a woman I saw regularly at daily Mass. She always sat quietly in the back, right where I always did, and always in the company of a lovely three or four year old boy. I asked a friend who she might be.

“You want nothing to do with her! She had a child out of wedlock!”

“Well, all right then, but I think I’d like to get to know her. When did you start throwing stones?”

“You’d be a fool if you ever thought you could love a woman like that.”

“Perhaps she might like to share her life and her son’s life with someone, or at least find a friend to make it easier?”

“Women like that are never any good, and you should know that already.”

“What, you mean the ones like Mary Magdalene?”

He had no answer for that, beyond a sigh and a roll of the eyes.

I was pathetically too shy to ever speak to her, but I always deeply admired her commitment to raising her son. The only good that ever came from it was that I found some better friends.

If the best criticism you can come up with is a rumor that someone has been intemperate, you are sadly missing the forest for the trees.

We can’t complain that we have separated love from sex, and then also separate love from all of our other judgments and actions.

33.7. Right amusements

. . . It is not necessary for the most part to go to the games; but if you should have occasion to go, show that your first concern is for yourself; that is, wish that only to happen which does happen, and him only to win who does win, for so you will suffer no hindrance.

But refrain entirely from applause, or ridicule, or prolonged excitement.

And when you go away do not talk much of what happened there, except so far as it tends to your improvement. For to talk about it implies that the spectacle excited your wonder. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

I grew up in a town that amuses itself, and distracts itself, through the exploits of four major league sports teams. The front pages of our newspapers would regularly glorify their victories and bemoan their defeats, while the stories about corrupt politicians, businessmen, and lawyers were usually reserved for the smaller print.

Common sense seems to give way to blind tribalism when it comes to sports in America, much as with the Circuses of Rome, or the Blues and the Greens in Constantinople, or Celtic versus Rangers in the Old Country.

When I moved to the South, the teams changed, but people still danced to the same old tune. Instead of hating the Cowboys with a vengeance, I was now expected to worship them as American gods.

Epictetus isn’t shunning the games, in whatever form they may take, because he’s a killjoy. He’s rather warning us about how easily mass hysteria can numb our sound judgment, and how dangerous it is to succumb to mindless passion.

The only major sporting event that has ever inspired me has been the FIFA World Cup. I made England “my” team from early on, simply because I was always moved by the romance of their incredible victory in 1966. I learned quickly that my personal preference was, according to some, worse than all the world’s worst heresies, blasphemies, and idolatries rolled into one. My Irish friends thought it a betrayal of the Cause. My German friends told me their loss in 1966 was only due to a vast political conspiracy. A fellow I knew from South America stopped speaking to me altogether, because football and a war in the South Atlantic were exactly the same thing in his mind.

My father would always frustrate me when we watched a game together. While I would jump around in ecstasy or roll around in agony, depending on the fortunes of my chosen heroes, my father would simply admire a good play, regardless of who played it, and asked only that the better team should win. I thought him a traitor, but he was simply trying to teach me good sportsmanship.

The Stoic will hardly begrudge us a pleasant amusement, but he will warn us about allowing our pastimes to consume our sense of self-control, decency, and fairness. If I am going to make such a complete fool of myself at the games, how poorly will I manage the needs of real life?

33.8. Right learning

. . . Do not go lightly or casually to hear lectures; but if you do go, maintain your gravity and dignity and do not make yourself offensive.

When you are going to meet any one, and particularly some man of reputed eminence, set before your mind the thought, 'What would Socrates or Zeno have done?' and you will not fail to make proper use of the occasion. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

I used to consider my days playing the game of higher education as a time of trial, because I was so frustrated by all the pettiness of small minds. I still consider it as a time of trial, but I now see it as the opportunity given to me to learn to not be petty and small-minded myself.

If you were a serious undergraduate you were strongly encouraged, and if you were any sort of graduate student you were absolutely required, to attend the usual evening and weekend lectures by visiting scholars. I never much liked the lengthy hagiographies in the introductions, but I learned quite a bit from those talks themselves. I still have pages and pages of notes I took back then, complete with my own thoughts and observations.

What I really never looked forward to, however, were the lengthy question and answer sessions. As a follower of Socrates, I hardly hate either questions or answers, but what irked me so was that these questions were usually not about a love of truth, but rather about a desire for recognition. Like some twisted political press conference, people stepped into the arena to challenge, and hopefully to defeat, a reigning champion. If they could manage it, they thought their fame would spread far and wide.

I recall one such lecture, by a very well respected Classical scholar, about the proper division and order of the books in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. I hardly know if he was right or wrong, but I was fascinated by the argument, and I was grateful for being given something to mentally chew on.

The talk had actually filled a rather large lecture hall, easily many hundreds of seats. When the lecturer opened the floor to questions, a man stood up in the back and started speaking. He spoke for some time. I still have no idea who he was, but I think I was supposed to recognize him. He surely thought we should all recognize him.

I could already tell that his question was hardly a question, but a personal attack. “Your reading of the text is clearly flawed, because you don’t understand the nuances of the Greek.”

The lecturer politely thanked him for the comment, and offered, as I recall, a four point reasoned response, even admitting that there were indeed issues still to be resolved.

The fellow wouldn’t stand down. “I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying. I have studied the language of Aristotle for many years, and I find it absolutely ridiculous that you are making such an obvious mistake.” By this point all heads were turned back to look at this man, and even from a distance, I saw a broad, self-satisfied grin.

“I believe I have answered your question as best I can, and I’d like to move on to other questions, if I may.”

Here’s where it got ugly. As he was sitting down, the man in the back pretended to mumble an aside, even though he was shouting it from the top of his lungs. “Well, they sure don’t make philosophers like they used to!” I was startled to hear a good number of people laugh, and some even clapping, in approval of the comment.

Again, I am not one to judge about the merit of the argument about Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It hardly matters, because what was really at stake, right there and then, was a judgment about respect and decency. I walked away that night realizing that I had learned an important lesson, that philosophy hardly amounted to a hill of beans if it didn’t encourage the practice of loving one’s neighbor.

What would Socrates and Zeno have done? These men were hardly obsequious, and many people downright despised them for challenging the usual norms. But I also hardly think either of them ever thought that a lecture or a debate was about puffing up their own self-importance.

33.9. Right position

. . . When you go to visit some great man, prepare your mind by thinking that you will not find him in, that you will be shut out, that the doors will be slammed in your face, that he will pay no heed to you.

And if in spite of all this you find it fitting for you to go, go and bear what happens and never say to yourself, 'It was not worth all this'; for that shows a vulgar mind and one at odds with outward things. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

I have heard some people describe these words of Epictetus as negative and pessimistic. Why should I not expect recognition, success, and glory from this life? Why should I assume the worst, when it would far better to hope for the best? Wouldn’t a more positive attitude be far more helpful in getting me what I want from others?

Indeed, I have noticed this “getting what I want from others” approach to be one of the most common of our time. It might seem to be a necessary ingredient for a productive life, as so many of those who come out on top appear to share in this way of thinking. If I am going to seek a position of importance, I should surely stop at nothing to acquire it.

Stoicism, however, asks us to reconsider the very measure of our lives, and suggests a rather different approach to outward things. Instead of asking myself whether I will or will not receive an honor I think I am due, I might be better served by asking myself whether I will or will not have acted according to my own excellence. I should seek to be in a right position toward myself, and not concern myself so much about my position toward others.

I would suggest that the very expectation of recognition and status is hardly a positive attitude at all. It isn’t within my power to determine how another receives me, even as it is very much within my power to determine how I judge and act myself. To believe that I deserve rewards from others isn’t really about self-reliance at all, but about dependence, and to measure my success by what others should give me isn’t about my own merit, but about entitlement.

How positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic, an attitude may seem to be has everything to do with what we consider worthy. The Stoic has confidence only in himself, and is willing to let all else be as it will be. I find that deeply positive, because it is an attitude of complete liberation. The lover of worldly success judges himself happy when he looks forward to others providing their favors. I find that deeply negative, because it is an attitude of complete subservience.

As someone who has struggled with the bite of the Black Dog for many years, I recognize my own version of negative thinking. When a foul mood overcomes me, I might think that the solution is to engage all the more in fixing my circumstances. I have found, however, that this has exactly the opposite result, much like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. My attitude will not improve by fixing the world, but rather by fixing myself. I find I am being quite the pessimist when I rely upon externals, and only an optimist when I rely upon my own judgment.

Whether it was the royal courts of the past, or the corporate boardrooms of the present, “getting what I want from others” is, from the Stoic perspective, a model grounded in surrender. I may wish and hope for all the best results from my bowing and scraping, from my pandering and flattery, but I will already have sold myself out by looking for what is good in all the wrong places.

To be at odds with outward things isn’t about failing to get them to conform to me, it’s rather about even wanting them to conform to me to begin with. Once I can change my position in relation to others, I can suddenly see good and bad with very different eyes.

33.10. Right humility

. . . In your conversation avoid frequent and disproportionate mention of your own doings or adventures; for other people do not take the same pleasure in hearing what has happened to you as you take in recounting your adventures. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

I’m grateful that I have rarely felt the need to be at the center of attention, and for most of my life I have managed to blend unobtrusively into the woodwork. I am conscious, however, that my way of explaining something is oftentimes quite anecdotal, probably because I haven’t mastered more refined teaching tools, and I will quite regularly ask myself: how much of this am I offering to help someone else understand, and how much of this is just about basking in my own experiences?

I think of all the great storytellers I have known through the years, and I remind myself what it was that made them great. It was the motive that always made the difference, and that, in turn, shaped the context. What were they trying to point out to their listener or reader? Was it about inspiring or about glorifying?

I had a wonderful history professor who had served in WWII, and he would often describe, in colorful detail, the exploits of the members of a B-24 bomber crew. Some were humorous, and they always helped me to picture the camaraderie of these men. Others were terrifying, and they always helped me to admire their courage. Over the years, I felt like I had gotten to know these fellows personally. I realized one day that he had never mentioned very much about the bombardier. When I asked him about that, he just brushed it aside. “That fool couldn’t hit the side of a barn door!”

It then occurred to me that he, of course, had been the bombardier, and it was only years later, after he had passed away, that I was ever told about his own remarkable service record, including how he had been decorated for saving the life of the crew’s navigator. He had shared all those stories about his friends, had placed himself there as a sort of observer, but he never drew deliberate attention to himself.

Having eccentric tastes, I am very much aware that the things that interest me will not always be of interest to others. If I do wish to share something about my own thoughts or experiences, I try not to just think about what centers around my own benefit, but what might be of use for someone else’s benefit. I have a whole storehouse of tales and exploits I will most likely never share with anyone, and that is because I can’t really think of a way that they could truly inform, assist, or amuse. That one about the Lebanese café owner, my suede safari hat, and a large jar of curry powder is going to have to stay locked away until I can think of a good moral to go with it.

I don’t think of humility as deliberately putting oneself down, because that can just be another way of puffing oneself up. I think of it as being able to use whatever gifts I may have to serve, instead of being served.

33.11. Right respect

. . . Avoid raising men's laughter; for it is a habit that easily slips into vulgarity, and it may well suffice to lessen your neighbor’s respect. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

Laughter is such a wonderful and frustrating thing, because as soon as I try to define what causes the joy, I have lost the very source of it. I’m reminded of Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, when he asked what would happen to a game if you removed all the rules. Would it still be a game?

I sometimes laugh because I find something funny, but once I explain the joke it is hardly funny at all. Now I am stuck with trying to explain a spontaneous experience in a clinical manner. The Ancient and Medieval Four Humors help us to understand the root of all this, because we find reality amusing when it is exaggerated and grossly distorted, much like extreme physical features in a good political cartoon.

I will often laugh, however, not because something is humorous, but because I am nervous, because I am uncertain about what to do, because I have absolutely no clue what is happening, or because everyone else is doing it.

More importantly, I will sometimes laugh as a form of ridicule, which is a veiled expression of my own arrogance and power.

A legendary professor at my college was known for calling out young whippersnappers who were chuckling and guffawing behind their hands during his class.

He would ask them a simple question: “Are you laughing with me, or laughing at me?”

The inevitable answer, that of the bully who is really a coward, was “we’re laughing with you, Professor.”

“Funny, but I’m not laughing.”

I was once sitting on a park bench by my old elementary school, enjoying that last cigarette from a pack of Rothmans, and a car raced erratically into the parking lot.

A fellow rushed out of the car and tried the school door. I have no idea what he was thinking, but I suspected he was having a bathroom emergency, and it had not occurred to him that it was a Saturday evening. If he’d been a good Irishman, he’d have found a well-placed tree or bush.

As I looked back at the car, there was the lost love of my life sitting in the passenger seat, the one who had now refused to speak to me for four years. Instead of ignoring me this time, her finger was pointed straight at me, and she was laughing hysterically. I had seen that same laugh many times before, and it wasn’t pleasant.

I simply got up and walked away, uncertain about what else I could possibly do. The car sped off again. As I walked, I still saw that finger pointed at me, along with that broad dismissive grin.

The image of being mocked by someone I had once thought of as my best friend haunts me to this day.

Laughing is not always about sharing something funny, or enjoying a good time. Too often, it is about trying to hurt the very same people we ought to love.

Whether it is at the honky-tonk or at a fancy dinner, we are all tempted to use humor as an excuse to be important, and to make others feel less important. I often find that the most popular people are the ones that make everyone laugh, not because they are sharing something humorous, but because they are putting someone else down.

No man can show respect through the ridicule of others, and no man should expect respect from others through his insults.

33.12. Right modesty

. . . It is dangerous too to lapse into foul language; when anything of the kind occurs, rebuke the offender, if the occasion allow, and if not, make it plain to him by your silence, or a blush or a frown, that you are angry at his words.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

Years ago, I would have rolled my eyes at this advice. I would have been concerned about how a love of formality is simply the appearance of dignity, and really has little do with true character. I am far more open now to what Epictetus says, not because age has made me any wiser, but because experience has taught me how expression that is vulgar, dismissive, or degrading is not only hurtful to others, but reflects a baseness in my own soul.

I am hardly as attuned to technology and social media as are my children, but I have noticed how online communication combines instant efficiency with a certain personal distance. This seems to be a breeding ground for expression that can be both careless and malicious. Though thoughtless speech has surely been with us as long as we have had language, it now seems to bit easier to engage in. Arguments give way to insults, reason to passion, and we can all do it from the comfort of a personal bubble.

If we feel offended, we offend right back, and the more base the language the better.

I see the chats that accompany online games, and they would a make a sailor blush. I read conservative news, filled with slurs and the insistence that liberals suffer from a mental illness, and I read liberal news filled with different slurs and the insistence that conservatives are all moral monsters. The question of truth doesn’t seem to enter the picture, because we’re so busy shouting about our indignation and putting others down.

The problem with vulgarity, I think, is not simply that it is saucy or crude, but that it is a slap in the face to the dignity of any person. Reducing someone or something to those two most common forms of foulness, sex and defecation, really does nothing more than consider man as just an animal.

One might also add the defamation of the Divine. If I am humble enough to believe in what is greater than me, I should never take such an idea, and such words, lightly. If I should choose to make myself the center of all things, then I hardly need to make light of something others happen to respect.

Now I can become all indignant and preachy about such things, but I find it best to just refuse to speak as others do, and to move on to something better. I’m the first too appreciate that extraordinary language is sometimes suited for extraordinary circumstances, but I find it too easy to make vulgarity all too ordinary. In doing so, I’m showing others that I have no respect for them, while also revealing how deeply I have no respect for myself.

34. Pleasure, pause, and balance

When you imagine some pleasure, beware that it does not carry you away, like other imaginations. Wait a while, and give yourself pause.

Next remember two things: how long you will enjoy the pleasure, and also how long you will afterwards repent and revile yourself. And set on the other side the joy and self-satisfaction you will feel if you refrain.

And if the moment seems come to realize it, take heed that you be not overcome by the winning sweetness and attraction of it; set in the other scale the thought how much better is the consciousness of having vanquished it.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 34 (tr Matheson)

Impressions and feelings can be tricky things. For the Stoic, it is not the pleasure or the pain itself that is good or bad to us, but rather our estimation and use of pleasure or pain that become the measure of their value for our living.

I can relate very immediately to Epictetus’ suggestions. I hardly think that any pleasure has done me any good at all if I have allowed myself to be immediately swept away by it. If it isn’t worth pausing, and considering it rightly, I am acting in the haste of blind surrender.

Now the way to estimate a pleasure can be to simply weigh the benefit and the cost. How much of myself am I giving, and what am I truly receiving? Caveat emptor. Most every life-defining mistake I have made arose from failing to rightly balance the credits and debits. Whether it be sex, money, drugs and alcohol, power, or fame, that first tingle of desire seems to offer so much. What it so often cost me was my own integrity, responsibility, freedom, and sense of respect. Some of those foolish decisions, made off the cuff and with hardly a thought, have come back to haunt me hundreds of times over.

I will often consider which sort of contentment will be deep and lasting. Will it be the pleasure of gratification, which is a thoughtless and careless abandonment, or the joy of right action, which proceeds from reflection and responsibility?

Note how often it is only the image and appearance, and not the deeper reality, that appeals to us, and it only takes the time and effort of judgment to see through the illusion. A pretty smile can seem so much more powerful than a loving soul, a sweet promise so much more convincing than genuine trust. I need only look beneath the mask. I have come to know many people in this life who are masters of illusion, but it hardly takes magical powers to see through the disguise. Do the deeds match the words? Do those promises sound too good to be true? Is the appeal to your character and sense of right, or to your gratification and sense of might?

When confronted with a pleasure, I try to take that time, and I try to consider the right balance of my own living, such that I am wary of paying too much later for a pittance right now. The right rewards of life are clear to us if we only keep focused on a love of what is true and good.

My old chums, Marillion, can come to my aid once again. In their song “The Uninvited Guest”, they warn us that some of our rash decisions come with too high a price. Once I’ve let the temptation over my threshold, it is often to hard to force it back out:

I was there when you said insincere "I love you's"

To a woman who wasn't your wife

And I fronted you the money

That you ran away and blew

On the biggest regret of your life

35. Fearing rebuke

When you do a thing because you have determined that it ought to be done, never avoid being seen doing it, even if the opinion of the multitude is going to condemn you.

For if your action is wrong, then avoid doing it altogether, but if it is right, why do you fear those who will rebuke you wrongly?

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 35 (tr Matheson)

I’ve long been used to the idea of acting rightly in private, quite often very deliberately, so that I will not be tempted to make my deeds dependent upon anyone’s approval.

Yet the opposite is just as true, that I should not fear acting rightly in public, and for exactly the same reason. I shouldn’t wish you to see it, or also not to see it. I should hardly care whether others recognize how I live, or do not recognize how I live, because their awareness, and their respect or dismissal, should have nothing to do with my sense of what is good.

A desire to crave popularity can be strong, and a desire to avoid unpopularity can be just as strong. I have been struggling to teach myself that I must shun both desires.

Since I first started earning any income, however meager, I have quietly tried my best to share what little I may have. I confronted a new obstacle, however, when one of those small gifts became public knowledge. Someone deeply unpopular with the usual crowd of busybodies had recently been fired, and I had just wanted to help him out. I can hardly complain about unfairness if I can’t be bothered to be fair myself.

“Did you hear that someone else paid his rent for the month? I have no idea who it was, but I’d like to slap that jerk in the face!”

I’m swallowing gravel at this point, because I was the jerk that paid his rent for the month. “Whatever you may think of him personally, we all need help sometimes. How is that a bad thing?”

“Some people don’t deserve help, and some people just need to get with the program before I’d even think about helping them.”

“But his program might not be your program. I paid his rent for this month, because he’d have been homeless otherwise. He’s a person, not your puppet.”

“Well, you can go to hell!”

They say that no good deed goes unpunished, but I suppose all of that depends on what we may consider a reward or a punishment. It felt deeply unpleasant to show my cards, and the consequences felt even more unpleasant. I was shunned, with many people walking past me in the halls and looking the other way. The story lacks a usual happy ending, because I left that job a while later as hated as the fellow I’d tried to help.

I just need to grow up, and realize that my popularity and my character are not interchangeable. Many of us, I suspect, are convinced that if we are liked by others, we also have power over others. In fact, we have no power over them at all. We have freely given them power over us.

I do enjoy having friends, and I am grateful if I am appreciated. I have learned, however, that the more I try to impress others, or conversely the more I try avoid offending them, the more I am also a slave, and not my own master.

I should choose to always offer kindness and friendship, but I should never choose to offer subservience to the will of the mob.

36. Day and night

The phrases, 'it is day' and 'it is night', mean a great deal if taken separately, but have no meaning if combined.

In the same way, to choose the larger portion at a banquet may be worthwhile for your body, but if you want to maintain your social decency it is worthless.

Therefore, when you are at a meal with another, remember not only to consider the value of what is set before you for the body, but also to maintain your self-respect before your host.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 36 (tr Matheson)

I cannot have it both ways, and be living a contradiction. I cannot be pursuing the goods of the body at the expense of the goods of the soul.

I recall my father’s disgust when I was in Boy Scouts, and our Troop received a dozen pizzas. The young men would quickly grab a slice from a box, fold it over and take one very large bite, throw the remains back into the box, and grab yet another slice. They would still be chewing the first bite when taking the second. There was much want, and much waste.

His concern, if I understood it rightly, wasn’t just about the external pleasantries of good manners. Rather, I think he saw, and was also trying to teach me, that how we tend to the needs of our bodies reflects our attitudes about the needs of our souls. Gluttony shows itself in the desire to devour too much food and drink, but this intemperance is at root a disorder in our thinking and our choosing.

Crave, acquire, consume, discard, and repeat. There can be no decency of character, no respect for others, where there is only the drive to dominate and possess.

Some people, of course, may have impeccable manners at fancy parties and dinners, even as their decorum is also in contradiction to a sort of social gluttony, the need to be at the center of attention, to have power over others through intrigue and flattery, to seek greater and greater position and influence.

Many years after the infamous Boy Scout Pizza Massacre, I was asked to attend a banquet to celebrate the success of one of our programs. Everyone was dressed in finery, ate and drank daintily using all the right glasses and silverware, and never spoke and chewed at the same time. When they did speak, their words seemed refined and educated.

I would have been wrong, however, to think that these people were living any better. Behind the appearance of class was just a different expression of the sort of gluttony that eats at the soul. It seemed like every comment I heard was directed to curry favor, acquire leverage, or cleverly insult others. I sensed immediately that this was just another instance of what Epictetus had described, because this desire to consume was still just as much in contradiction to social decency. The trappings were different, but the content was much the same.

At first this angered me, but I realized that my resentment would only harm my own sense of decency and respect. I considered just walking out early, but also recognized this as a form of contempt. All that seemed left to me was to try to be selfless, sincere, and friendly in my own words and actions.

This was not easy at all, and I caught myself more than once beginning to roll my eyes, or starting to prepare a shifty and dismissive comment. I thought of Epictetus on conflicting standards, of Socrates on living the same life in public and in private, and of Marcus Aurelius reminding us all that the best response to being wronged is simply to do something right.

I have sadly never been good at all in social situations. I am too shy, awkward, and eccentric to promote my own popularity. But that unpleasant banquet did serve to confirm for myself that I do not need to seek my own position at all. That is still just pursuing another good of the body, when I should work on developing the goods of the soul. The conflicting standards of consumption and character should be like day and night to me.

37. Disgrace and neglect

If you try to act a part beyond your powers, you not only disgrace yourself in it, but you neglect the part that you could have filled with success.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 37 (tr Matheson)

I once knew a business student who, with all good will, was certain he could have his cake and eat it too. “You’ll see, I’m going to make it big, and I’ll figure out all that enlightenment stuff along the way!”

It may simply seem to be a matter of having to work a bit harder to find success in many different aspects of life. There should be no reason, for example, that I can’t learn to play the bagpipes and also tend to my rosebushes, or cook the perfect pot of chili and also perform heart surgery.

But what Epictetus refers to here is not just about acquiring more particular skills. It is about choosing our universal purpose, and thereby deciding on the very values we will live by. The benefit of all the lower goods will only arise through their harmony with higher goods. To admit of any contradiction here is to go in many directions at once, each canceling out the other.

For Stoicism, the disgrace will be in deciding that I am determined by the things outside of my power, and the neglect will come from thereby abandoning the things within my power. Putting either one in first place necessarily means putting the other one in second place, and the measure of one must yield to the measure of the other.

This is why the Stoic will treat his circumstances conditionally, and always make use of them for the absolute sake of his virtue. This is also why the grasping man will treat his virtue conditionally, and will always modify it for the sake of his position. So much rests, of course, on how we understand the nature of success to begin with, a question that is so important, with an answer that is too easily taken for granted.

Over the years, I have tried to order my life around my own wisdom and virtue, and I have insisted upon this as my standard of success. There have been times, however, when I have been jealous and resentful of the way others have come to revel in wealth, honor, and power.

Now the blame hardly rests with others, because they have chosen their own measure of success, and their words and actions reflect that commitment. The responsibility is rather my own, because I have once again tried to have it both ways. Why would I bemoan the absence of something I don’t desire, and why would I desire something I really know not to be good?

I once described it to someone like sitting in a restaurant but wanting to eat both the dish I ordered, and also the dish my neighbor ordered. On a more serious level, it is like promising fidelity by committing to a wife, but somehow thinking I can still be faithful and take an interest in other men’s wives.

I only feel such a frustration when my own estimation of the good is conflicted and disordered. This demands that I fix myself, because as soon as I complain about what others have done to me, I have already betrayed the very basis of the Stoic principle. How funny, and how fitting, that even as I am so worried about all the externals, it already means that I have ignored all the internals.

Wealth, and honor, and power can surely come my way, and I can still turn them to my good, but what I can never turn to my good is the want of such things for their own sake. This is why the disgrace of loving the wrong things will always go hand in hand with the neglect of loving the right things.

38. Take care of yourself

As in walking you take care not to tread on a nail or to twist your foot, so take care that you do not harm your Governing Principle.

And if we guard this in everything we do, we shall set to work more securely.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 38 (tr Matheson)

I have always been advised to care for my health, to make certain that I eat right, exercise regularly, and make those regular visits to the doctor, even when nothing seems wrong, just in case.

This is indeed a proper concern, but it is all about my conditions, and not about my happiness.

I have always been advised to care for my career, to make certain that I do my job to everyone’s satisfaction, pay right respects to my superiors, and forever be on the lookout for those opportunities for advancement.

This is indeed a proper concern, but it is all about my conditions, and not about my happiness.

I have always been advised to care for my finances, to spend and to save wisely, and to find clever investments that will offer my family opportunity and security in the future.

This is indeed a proper concern, but it is all about my conditions, and not about my happiness.

I have always been advised to care for my social connections, to nurture mutual bonds, to give favors whenever convenient, and to call in favors whenever necessary.

This is indeed a proper concern, but it is all about my conditions, and not about my happiness.

You get the picture. And if that were all that I had to live for, I’d rather just pull the plug right now. As unpopular as it may be to say so, I have never seen the value in running a race, however expertly, and then departing this world after I have won the most trophies and toys.

I should indeed take care of myself, because I am the only thing in this whole wide world that I can control.

Now for some people, taking care of themselves mean getting what they want from others. That is inherently selfish. For other people, taking care of themselves means giving whatever they can to others. That is inherently selfless. These are two very different models of “taking care”. One is passive, the other active.

My life is about what I do, and never about what is done to me. What I choose to do, and however much effort I put into it, will be pointless if it’s all about finding ways for the world to glorify my own vanity.

There is really only one thing I must take care of, and that is what Epictetus calls my Governing Principle, my judgment and choice, my ability to know true from false, and my ability to choose right from wrong.

All of those other things, my health, my career, my finances, or my social status, will come and go. The only thing I can choose to follow in constancy is my own moral character.

My happiness will inevitably be all about how well I live, regardless of my circumstances, and it will have nothing to do with gimmicks and appearances. I can paint all the pretty pictures about how I appear to others. I can lie, cheat, or manipulate all I want, but who I am, in my own mind and in own my heart, is what will truly matter for my fulfillment. That is the real security that can come from life.

39. Wanting the biggest boots

Every man's body is a measure for his property, as the foot is the measure for his shoe.

If you stick to this limit, you will keep the right measure; if you go beyond it, you are bound to be carried away down a precipice in the end; just as with the shoe, if you once go beyond the foot, your shoe puts on gilding, and soon purple and embroidery.

For when once you go beyond the measure there is no limit.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 39 (tr Matheson)

If the shoe fits, wear it. If I can find myself shoes that are comfortable, that help me to walk well, and are rugged enough to take me to all of the places I need to go, I should really care for nothing else.

Throughout my life, footwear has been a measure of status. In high school, my friends would quite often define others by the clothes and shoes they wore. Mind you, this was the middle of the 1980’s, and my circle was definitely very alternative, so there was no other option to be “in” than wearing a pair of Dr. Martens 1460’s, either in black or in oxblood. I found it amusing that there could ever be any fashion that was alternative, which seemed in itself to be a contradiction.

By the time I finally managed to get myself a pair, complete with the trendy yellow laces, I was told that I was so behind the times. Vintage Soviet army boots were now apparently the only way to go.

When college came around, everyone was wearing what they were now calling “athletic shoes”, equipped with all kinds of strange straps and pumping action, which seemed more appropriate for sexual bondage than they did for footwear. I kept wearing my 1460’s, and I still remained decidedly uncool.

What I found, however, was that these boots were the most comfortable and the most durable I had ever known. I never had a car, and I walked everywhere I went. This was in New England, where rain and snow are the norm. They kept me warm, dry, and seemed to last forever. I got used to being called the fellow with the clown shoes, and at a certain point I simply stopped caring.

The 1460’s became popular again for a very brief period in the early 1990’s, this time having been appropriated by the Grunge movement. That fashion also faded from view, but those boots still remained reliable, because they always got me where I needed to go, regardless of what people thought of them.

Perhaps they will become trendy once again in my lifetime, but I will surely no longer notice. Time can give us a better perspective, and we can all see how ridiculous we are when we add image to necessity. This holds for many aspects of life, from our clothes, to our cars, homes, careers, or politics.

Nature herself provides the only measure for what I need, just as the foot provides the only measure for the shoe. Once I add all the bells and whistles to the simplicity of a life well lived, I have distracted myself from the task at hand. Whenever I abandon such a measure, and I am no longer bound by my need, that leaves me only with a limitless greed. This is the reason why the good man is so easily satisfied, while the bad man will never have enough.

40. Not a something, but a someone

Women from fourteen years upwards are called 'madam' by men. Wherefore, when they see that the only advantage they have got is to be marriageable, they begin to make themselves attractive and to set all their hopes on this.

We must take pains then to make them understand that they are really honored for nothing but a decent and modest life.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 40 (tr Matheson)

Some of us like to think that all the attitudes of the past must of necessity be burdened by sexism. I once had to ask a student to re-read this passage four times before he realized that Epictetus might actually be saying something very positive about women.

The Stoic will always move beyond the accidents of gender, race, age, wealth, or social status, all those things we like to argue about so much, to the very core of what it means to be a human being, a creature of reason and choice. Measure any person by the fulfillment of his nature, to live with wisdom and with virtue.

Epictetus is telling us that women should not simply care for their appearance to make them a good prospect for marriage. In modern terms, we might say that this only reduces her to an object to be desired and possessed by a man. What should she worry about instead, and what makes her worthy of respect? Nothing is more important than her moral character. In this most essential of ways, a woman should be absolutely no different than a man. These are the very qualities any Stoic believes will define our human excellence.

People of poor character, from any time or any place, are the ones who make human dignity dependent upon externals. I believe we still continue to do this when we get our relationships, which should rightly be about the exercise of friendship, confused with the exercise of sexual pleasure and power. I was very confused by a woman, of very progressive values, I knew in college, who regularly told me that sex was about pleasure, and marriage was about social and financial security. She said she would pursue one now, and the other later. Each, she argued, was a way to exercise her own freedom and power, because each would help her to get what she wanted.

When I was finally blessed to meet the woman I would marry, I never thought about her as something that would give me pleasure, or something that would help me exercise power. She was not a something, but a someone. I never thought of her as a means of getting me anything at all, but as someone to whom I could give my love. I believe it makes all the difference to respect people for who they are, and not what external conveniences they might have.

A man is hardly worthy if he is rich, and a woman is hardly worthy if she is attractive. That is the thinking of shallow minds. Men and women are both worthy when they seek to live with decency and modesty.

41. A man, not a mouse

It is a sign of a dull mind to dwell upon the cares of the body, to prolong exercise, eating, drinking, and other bodily functions.

These things are to be done along the way; all your attention must be given to the mind.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 41 (tr Matheson)

It is my Governing Principle that makes me a man instead of a mouse, an elephant, or a houseplant. I need not be a Platonist, who might merely consider the body as a disposable vessel, or a Manichean, who might think of matter as inherently evil. I need only remember that the lower must be ruled by the higher.

From the perspective of Stoic ethics, I don’t even think it matters whether or not there will be a specific consciousness of self after the death of the body. I find that if I start thinking in those terms, I worry more about the later rewards for living, than the actual value of living well now. The Stoic knows that he came from Nature, lived in a world ordered through Providence, and that he will return back into Nature at the end. How that will specifically play itself out, I leave to our esteemed theologians.

I should certainly not hate the body, or dismiss it. I should rather consider how my power of judgment and choice, what I can call my human soul, must order and direct everything about myself. This does not make the body meaningless, but only makes it meaningful when it is guided by the mind. Only understanding can give meaning and purpose. It is therefore no exaggeration that I should dedicate all of my attention to my mind, because the goods of my body will only be of benefit through the complete and total activity of that mind.

Exercise, food, drink, and sleep are not bad things, but they should never be sought for their own sake. As with each and every circumstance of life, I must ask myself how my thinking should put them to good use.

Am I exercising so that my health can help me live with character, or am I exercising to appear attractive to others? Am I eating and drinking to live well, or am I eating and drinking for gratification? Am I sleeping to have a sharp mind, or am I sleeping to be lazy?

I have often noted the degrees to which we will go to glorify the body, and we assume that human beauty is determined merely by physical characteristics. We may speak out against such shallow standards, but we seem to fall right back on them in our actions. What I think to be beautiful about a person will depend entirely upon what I identify as being most dignified and valuable about human nature, and so it tells me quite a bit when people notice a bronzed and sculpted physique over a kind and thoughtful disposition.

I often ask myself how much of my time and effort are dedicated to improving all the aspects of my body, and how much of my time and effort are dedicated to improving all the aspects of my soul. An honest answer is a very helpful one, because it tells me where my priorities really lie. I rise and fall with my estimation of the superior and the inferior.

42. “He thought it right.”

When a man speaks evil or does evil to you, remember that he does or says it because he thinks it is fitting for him.

 It is not possible for him to follow what seems good to you, but only what seems good to him, so that, if his opinion is wrong, he suffers, in that he is the victim of deception.

In the same way, if a composite judgment which is true is thought to be false, it is not the judgment that suffers, but the man who is deluded about it.

If you act on this principle you will be gentle to him who reviles you, saying to yourself on each occasion, 'He thought it right.'

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 42 (tr Matheson)

I had already experienced as a child how thoughtless and hurtful people could be. It took time, however, for me to learn that this did not simply arise from a deliberate desire to do bad things. Those bad things, however damaging they may have been, in some way appeared to be good to them. It was not the harm itself that was appealing, but the way in which the harm was falsely perceived to be of benefit.

This hardly makes the ignorance of what is good an excuse, and it hardly removes responsibility, but it does help us to understand why people act as they do, and it does help us to be more forgiving in our own reactions.

I often return to that bugbear of the Stoic, the feeling of resentment. When I feel hurt or wronged, it may appear right to respond in kind. I have observed two primary forms of this, the desire to directly cause hurt to another, or the desire to indirectly ignore and dismiss another. I suppose it is something like the distinction between active and passive aggression. The first can be as simple as a nasty word, the second as simple as looking the other way. We all, of course, know the more severe forms as well.

What all forms of resentment share in common is a false perception of the good, but one that still seems helpful to the one who is angry. I find it rests upon a simple assumption, that if I hurt someone who has hurt me, I have done something good for myself. What this fails to see is that Nature is cooperative, and not competitive. The good for one cannot be at the expense of another, or at the expense of the whole.

Instead of thinking and acting selfishly and vindictively, I could think and act in a way that is mutual and harmonious. I don’t always see it that way at all when I am hurt and angry, of course, since then I can think only of destroying and casting off.

Part of the beauty of the Stoic Turn is this very recognition that those who do evil genuinely believe it to be good. This can help me to understand them, and it can help me from becoming exactly like that myself. Once I see vice as the result of a self-deception, I can perhaps help another to understand, and once I see the offender as someone who is suffering, I can perhaps help him to relieve that suffering.

I need only remember that whenever I am confronted by a hateful or dismissive person, I am seeing someone who is sick, not in his body, but in his thinking. This demands neither false pity nor self-righteous condescension, but a genuine concern for his own health. A doctor should hardly punish his patient, and a good man should never condemn his persecutor.

I tell myself, each and every day, that the only counter for resentment and rejection from another is understanding and compassion from myself.

43. Carrying what is mine

Everything has two handles, one by which you can carry it, the other by which you cannot.

If your brother wrongs you, do not take it by that handle, the handle of his wrong, for you cannot carry it by that, but rather by the other handle—that he is a brother, brought up with you, and then you will take it by the handle that you can carry by.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 43 (tr Matheson)

I have long joked that this means we must take things by the love handle, but the New Puritanism of our day apparently does not find that funny. So I assure you that I will not mention such an inappropriate joke.

I have spent too many years of my life consumed by pain, and I have been tempted to respond to all of it with despair or rage. I could also respond with love, which has the power to restore all things, instead of destroying all things.

Not a single one of us will escape this life untouched by suffering. Providence will dish out all sorts of different kinds and degrees, depending upon what we can, or should, manage to help us become better and wiser. But none of us will escape suffering.

I consider what has come my way, and what still might come my way, and I need ask myself only one question: what will I do with it, and from what end will I pick it up?

Common sense, and the beauty of Newtonian physics, has always taught me that it is easier to pull something than to push it. I was regularly told to lift with my legs, and not with my back. I have also learned the importance of getting the right grip on anything at all before attempting to move it. Now is there some sort of moral equivalent to these physical practices?

Yes, and it concerns finding what Epictetus would call the right handle. I must consider not just the physical energy of my actions, but also their moral energy. This centers entirely on the Stoic concept of what is within my power, as distinct from what is outside of my power.

If another does me wrong, that is not within my power. Now I can try to use all the force I want, but none of it will change the nature of his side of the action. I can’t lift it, budge it, leverage it, wedge it, push it, or pull it. His end will stay right where it is, until he changes the nature of his own choice.

What is within my power is the matter of lifting, budging, or leveraging my own side, and that is precisely the end, and the handle, that I can manage for myself.

Similarly, imagine that you have thrown something at me. I can’t stop you from throwing it, but I can decide if I catch it, dodge it, block it, or if I just let it hit me.

These are all, of course, weak and incomplete analogies, but they hopefully reflect the deeper reality about how I can carry anything that comes my way. What is done, will be done. What I do with what is done is entirely up to me.

This means I can only move what is mine to move, and I can only give what is mine to give. As soon as I dwell upon what has been done to me, I’m hopelessly lost. As soon as I consider what I can do for myself, my power has no limit. On the one end I am like a slave, on the other end I can be like a god.

I can indeed carry my life, on the condition that I know what is rightly mine to carry, and from which end I must carry it. If I dwell upon your own hatred, I become consumed by hatred myself. If I dwell upon my own love, I have done right by myself, and I might just have the ghost of a chance to convince you to love for yourself.

44. Rich and clever

It is illogical to reason thus, 'I am richer than you, therefore I am superior to you', 'I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am superior to you.'

It is more logical to reason, 'I am richer than you, therefore my property is superior to yours', 'I am more eloquent than you, therefore my speech is superior to yours.'

You are something more than property or speech.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 44 (tr Matheson)

I had one of those formative experiences many years ago, when I had to go through the uncomfortable ritual of meeting a girl’s parents. It was immediately apparent that I would not be appropriate, as most every comment during dinner seemed directed at my low social and economic status. While I recognized that I was being judged because I wasn’t rich enough, what I foolishly did not recognize was my own error, that I was equally judging them for being too rich.

The shared mistake was that we were eyeing one another not from who we were, but by what we had. These are hardly the same thing. While I certainly couldn’t control how her parents thought, I should have seen right away that this was not the problem. My own thinking, which was my responsibility, was the problem I could manage.

Our possessions never make us virtuous, and our clever words never make us wise. We all claim to know this, of course, but I’m not entirely sure we truly understand that the nature of a thing is never defined by what is added to it from outside. I can dress a man in a fine suit, confer a impressive degree upon him, give him a fancy title with a huge salary, and house him in the most prestigious neighborhood. I could also take all these things from him. Who he is, the sum of his character, will only change based upon his own judgments and choices, dependent entirely upon what is within him.

Which of us would not think to look at the same man, but have vastly different views of him based upon whether he is sitting behind an executive desk, or begging on a street corner?

I once knew a fascinating fellow, considered insane by some, who liked to perform little informal social experiments. We were in a crowded pub, and he suddenly began affecting a severe stutter while striking up conversations with strangers. He would try to explain his work in software design, but one by one, these people found excuses to move along.

He moved across the room and introduced himself in exactly the same way, but now with a refined, polished Mid-Atlantic accent. Before too long, he had a small group listening to his every word.

I have never found myself respected for being rich or having an important job, but every so often someone will seem deeply impressed that I managed to get a Doctorate. I resist this reaction violently, and tell people quite directly that a fancy piece of paper, won through making all the right steps in an elaborate social dance was of absolutely no credit to me.  

“But doesn’t that mean that you’re a really smart guy?”

“It may mean that, though I suspect it has more to do with being a clever guy, and that’s not the same thing. Either way, being smart or clever, or being rich or powerful, really doesn’t mean anything about me, but about the smarts, the riches or the power. I’d really rather learn to be a good guy.”

Some people seem deeply confused when I say this, while others seem to understand immediately.

45. Quick to judge

If a man washes quickly, do not say that he washes badly, but that he washes quickly.

 If a man drinks much wine, do not say that he drinks badly, but that he drinks much.

For until you have decided what judgment prompts him, how do you know that he acts badly?

If you do as I say, you will assent to your apprehensive impressions and to none other.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 45 (tr Matheson)

Being quick to judge is never the same as making sound judgments. It is about making those sloppy judgments we have absolutely no right to make.

An old college professor I loved dearly had a habit that would now be considered completely unacceptable. While in his office, he always had a small tumbler of whiskey and ice near at hand, and he would sip at it regularly during the day. Those who disliked him, whether it was because they received less of a grade than they thought they deserved, or because they disagreed with his values, were very quick to label him a drunk.

I knew him very well, and he was never a drunk. He liked his whiskey, and he surely must have drunk quite a bit of it, but his mind was always as sharp as a blade. It was entirely right to say that he drank, but it was a leap to say that he drank too much. I’m told Winston Churchill was much the same.

Let us describe things as they are, and not how we would wish them to be for our own satisfaction.

I briefly worked with a wonderful young lady, as kind and as decent a one as you could find, but she would sometimes have a noticeable body odor. Her enemies immediately made this a matter of her character, and would regularly mention it, behind her back, of course, as a way to put her down. What they did not know was that this was a side effect of a medication she had to take for a chronic illness.

I once sadly lost my temper at one of these people, and pointed out that very reason.

“Well how could I possibly have known?”

“You never needed to know, because it isn’t any of your darn business. So you don’t like how she smells sometimes, but whatever you add to that is just on you. Which one is worse, the way she smells or the way you are thinking?”

People who don’t smile aren’t always grumpy, people who dress extravagantly aren’t always rich, and people who don’t look you in the eye aren’t always shifty. They just don’t smile, they dress in a fancy manner, or they look the other way. Let us never assume the cause from the effect without good reason, as we do not always understand all the thinking, motive, and circumstance that goes behind what we do see.

46. Digesting, not displaying

On no occasion call yourself a philosopher, nor talk at large of your principles among the multitude, but act on your principles.

For instance, at a banquet do not say how one ought to eat, but eat as you ought. Remember that Socrates had so completely got rid of the thought of display that when men came and wanted an introduction to philosophers he took them to be introduced; so patient of neglect was he.

And if a discussion arises among the multitude on some principle, keep silent for the most part; for you are in great danger of blurting out some undigested thought.

And when some one says to you, 'You know nothing', and you do not let it provoke you, then know that you are really on the right road.

For sheep do not bring grass to their shepherds and show them how much they have eaten, but they digest their fodder and then produce it in the form of wool and milk. Do the same yourself; instead of displaying your principles to the multitude, show them the results of the principles you have digested.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 46 (tr Matheson)

I am sometimes worried that I am a half-Stoic, a pseudo-Stoic if you will, because I understand and embrace every single word that Epictetus writes here, but I still need to wake up every single day, and fail a dozen times in their application for every one time I get it right.

Such a concern is, of course, a part of the symptoms, and a not part of the cure. I fret that I’ve messed it up yet again, forgetting completely that there is no secret formula to doing it right. I am the only obstacle. The only thing that gets in my way is when I am still clutching at an obsession with all the circumstances. All I need to do is to change my thinking and my action, right here and now, and care nothing for the rest. I only fail to be Stoic in my living when I choose to care about all the things a Stoic need not care for.

I am the only one allowing myself to be prodded, poked, and provoked by my apparent place in the world. As soon as I worry about being thought a fool, it is my decision right there that has actually made me a fool.

When I was a child, I was regularly subject to bullying. When I was getting older, I was distraught that people I loved so dearly didn’t love me in return. These things do indeed hurt mightily. For myself, a great moral goal I now know to aim for is not to define myself by what others have said and done. I consider this the growing up part of the deal.

One of the things that made Socrates a great philosopher was that he never wanted to be perceived as one. He told us that the what made him wise was how he knew that he knew nothing, yet he also described himself as the greatest gift given to Athens.

For a Stoic, there is no contradiction here at all. It is only genuine humility, not the false sort of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, that can make us great. Socrates knew who he was, and he knew what he had to offer to his friends. Whether they chose to listen, or chose to praise him, was not what defined him. One might say that he was unpopular precisely because he did not care to be popular.

It’s those moments when I do not feel hurt by an insult, or I do not feel rejected by a slight, or I do not feel destroyed by a betrayal, that help to me to know I’m on exactly the right track.

At the moments when I am about to break down, I sometimes think about an odd phrase, “Epictetus and the sheep.” Sheep may seem so lowly, but they are also so glorious. One of the greatest moments of my youth was simply spending time with some Herdwick sheep in the Lake District.  What wonderful creatures they were, very much like ourselves, easily frightened by some things, yet also so willing to follow and to serve for all the right things.

Sheep never brag about how much grass they have eaten, but they give of their fine wool. Now if only we could all do the same, and not brag about what we have consumed, but rather humbly offer what we can.

Your fancy posturing will never impress me, but your right actions most certainly will. How wonderful that those who care the least about being loved are exactly the ones who deserve our love.

47. Embracing statues

When you have adopted the simple life, do not pride yourself upon it, and if you are a water-drinker do not say on every occasion, 'I am a water-drinker.'

And if you ever want to train laboriously, keep it to yourself and do not make a show of it.

Do not embrace statues.

If you are very thirsty take a good draught of cold water, and rinse you mouth and tell no one.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 47 (tr Matheson)

I learned very quickly that there was an inverse proportion between how much someone wanted to live well, and how much he wanted to be seen to be living well. I also think it true that while the desire for a good life is content with simplicity, the desire for recognition craves complexity.

Ask a good man what he does every day, and he might shrug his shoulders, and perhaps even tell you that he simply does his best to live with dignity and decency. Ask the self-important man, and he will drop one reference after another to all of his conquests. Be prepared, because the self-important man will go on for some time, while masking his self-love with the appearance of service. He would not care to do what he does if he can’t brag about it.

Consider the man who wishes to be healthy, so he eats well. Now consider the man who wishes to be seen as eating well, and he never misses the opportunity to tell you all about it, complete with a thorough account of his brilliant diet and exercise plan. He will be certain to remind you what a sacrifice it has all been, but if you only followed his model, you could be as great as him.

The first time I read this passage, many years ago, I had no idea what Epictetus meant about embracing statues. I could only think of those certain folks who enter a Catholic church, and go through that elaborate ritual of appearing devout, genuflecting, sprinkling themselves with holy water, and parading down the aisle with their hands pressed together, not forgetting to stop at every side altar to light another candle.

It turned out the reference was to Diogenes the Cynic, who apparently made it a point to hug status while naked in the middle of winter. Now the Cynics are close cousins to the Stoics, but the Cynics are sometimes more severe, and they became masters of what we would now call performance art. I’d like to think that Diogenes intended this as a teaching moment, but Epictetus will apparently have none of it. Once you intend to show, you are showing off.

I need to bite my own tongue many times a day, because I feel tempted to draw attention to myself, and I realize that what I want to say will not help someone else, but will only inflate my ego. I have great respect for a man from our local VFW, who I know to be a genuine war hero, but whenever the braggarts start talking about their noble deeds, he just sits quietly and smokes his cigar. The others could not hold a candle to what he did, but he doesn’t care. He lets them rant, and he doesn’t even roll his eyes in disgust.

I was taught something similar as a child, in my own particular Roman Catholic tradition, from Matthew 6: 1-6: 

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men.

Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men.

 Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

48. My own worst enemy

The ignorant man's position and character is this: he never looks to himself for benefit or harm, but to the world outside him. The philosopher's position and character is that he always looks to himself for benefit and harm.

The signs of one who is making progress are: he blames none, praises none, complains of none, accuses none, never speaks of himself as if he were somebody, or as if he knew anything. And if any one compliments him he laughs in himself at his compliment; and if one blames him, he makes no defense.

He goes about like a convalescent, careful not to disturb his constitution on its road to recovery, until it has got firm hold. He has got rid of the will to get, and his will to avoid is directed no longer to what is beyond our power but only to what is in our power and contrary to nature.

In all things he exercises his will without strain. If men regard him as foolish or ignorant he pays no heed. In one word, he keeps watch and guard on himself as his own enemy, lying in wait for him.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 48 (tr Matheson)

I’ve been reading fancy philosophy for quite some time, but it was only more recently that I started to see what all those fine words meant in the regular practice of life. I think especially about my estimation of happiness, and the measure of what I think to be good or bad in life.

If the world gave me nice things, I felt happy, and if it took all the nice things away, I felt miserable. I could swing wildly from ecstasy to agony at a moment’s notice, and it finally sank in that there was something very wrong here. I began to notice that a dependence on pleasant circumstances made my character weaker, and then when those pleasant circumstances were replaced with unpleasant ones, that character was so atrophied that I was crushed under the weight. I wasn’t making the right choices when the world was going as I wanted it to, because the world was really doing all the leading and directing. Now I no longer knew how to lead and direct myself when those false edifices fell away.

For a time, I thought that the ignorant man was also a lazy man, because he depended on things other than himself. I also learned, however, that the lover of circumstances may work very hard at getting what he wants, and that the problem isn’t how much effort we put into something, but toward what end we direct that effort. Working with complete dedication to get the world to conform to me is just as foolish as doing nothing at all and expecting the world to conform to me. My weakness is simply in looking outward, and not inward, for benefit or harm.

The reason a good man never offers praise or blame to others is not because there is no such thing as responsibility, but because he recognizes that he needs to be accountable to himself. The reason a good man cares nothing for praise or blame from others is not because he is cold and heartless, but because he recognizes that he must never define himself through their judgment.

The very desire to get and to avoid must be radically transformed, to learn to accept the world as it will be, and to concern myself only with my own desires, thoughts, and actions.

I had often thought that holding on tight to all the right people as my friends would bring me benefits, and blocking off all the wrong people as my enemies would keep me from harm. Yet how people will come and go, or how any circumstances will come and go, has never been under my control, and I am following a path of ignorance when I allow these things to rule me.

I am the one who will determine what is good and evil in myself, and therefore the only author of my happiness or misery. I will either be my own best friend, or my own worst enemy. I should hold up a mirror instead of pointing the finger.

49. Inclined to blush

When a man prides himself on being able to understand and interpret the books of Chrysippus, say to yourself, 'If Chrysippus had not written obscurely this man would have had nothing on which to pride himself.

What is my object? To understand Nature and follow her. I look then for some one who interprets her, and having heard that Chrysippus does I come to him.

But I do not understand his writings, so I seek an interpreter. So far there is nothing to be proud of. But when I have found the interpreter it remains for me to act on his precepts; that and that alone is a thing to be proud of. But if I admire the mere power of exposition, it comes to this—that I am turned into a grammarian instead of a philosopher, except that I interpret Chrysippus in place of Homer.

Therefore, when some one says to me, 'Read me Chrysippus', when I cannot point to actions which are in harmony and correspondence with his teaching, I am rather inclined to blush.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 49 (tr Matheson)

Chrysippus was the third leader of the Stoic school in Athens, following Zeno of Citium and Cleanthes of Assos. We have only very brief fragments, and some secondary accounts, about what these great men had to say. The rest has been lost to history. As a bookish fellow who enjoys browsing through dusty old manuscripts, this makes me sad. Imagine what I could learn if I only had the manuscripts of the early Stoics?

Yet I must ask myself how much I care for books, and how much I care for truth. Do I care more for the posturing and profit that comes from interpreting a text, or the practice that comes from living what that text has to tell me?

My own sad experience was with what I called the ‘Panzer Thomists’, those who were so interested in the ironclad beauty of the writing of St. Thomas Aquinas that they forgot all about the doing. I’ve seen it elsewhere, of course, from the myriad contorted literalist or symbolic readings of Sacred Scriptures, to the petty political arguments about the United States Constitution, to the ways that the bylaws of a non-profit organization are twisted in order to make money.

As soon as you and I worry more about the words than about what the words signify, we are both completely lost. Please do not tell me that it’s all about the words. Words mean things, and they can be both used and abused.

I should worry less about the writer, or someone who has the knack to interpret the writer, than what I can learn about the actual true and the good from the writing.

I was once running a hiring committee for a new faculty member, and the thought of that disturbs me just as much as it should disturb you. The candidate taught a class for our students on the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. His solution was taken word for word from the Summa Theologica, and I admired the thoroughness with which he had done his homework.

After he taught the class, during dinner, I asked him to explain the position in his own words. He once again parroted the text. I told him I wanted to understand what the text meant, and I raised certain questions I had about the relationship of substance and accident. He looked like a deer in headlights.

“Well, I just explained it. That’s what St. Thomas says.”

“Yes, I know what St. Thomas says. I’m asking you to explain it to me, and I want to grasp the issue. Assume I’m a complete idiot, and give me the truth of it as even an idiot could understand.”

He smiled and nodded, thinking he knew what I was asking for. I was then given a list of memorized references from St. Augustine and the Catholic Catechism. He smugly sat back, entirely comfortable that he had done exactly what I had asked of him.

He had, of course, done nothing of the sort. Quoting sources does not tell me that you understand anything, and it tells me only that you have studied the sources. A parrot, as amusing as he may be, is not the same thing as a man.

I always wanted to understand what Plato and Aristotle had to write, because what they wrote was a means to understanding the truth. No, I was told, it must be filtered through the commentators and interpreters, because they understood it better.

Even then, I was told not to read the interpreters, but I should read only those trendy contemporary philosophers who posed in fancy pictures, and who told me I could never understand the Classics until I read their books.

It is time to stop the madness. I am very glad you wrote a book to get your academic promotion, and I wish you the best. I will also not contest that you have chosen the latest ‘-ism’ to make yourself popular.

But never, ever, tell me that I cannot be wise or good because your most recent best-selling book is not a part of my life. I have chosen to care for the content, and you have chosen to care for the presentation.

Don’t tell me that you can explicate Chrysippus. Show me the truths he taught, in the beauty of your actions.

50. Sticking to convictions

Whatever principles you put before you, hold fast to them as laws that it will be impious to transgress.

But pay no heed to what any one says of you; for this is something beyond your own control.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 50 (tr Matheson)

We need not yet argue the specifics of such principles, and we can, for the moment, put aside all the arguments as to why they are good. At the very least, we should know that if we believe our principles to be right, we should also believe that we are bound by them.

Yet observe how difficult even such a conviction can be for us. I may hold that principle in high esteem, and consider it not a burden, but an honor, to obey at all times, yet there then seem to be those moments when I abandon such an inviolable measure for something else.

In my own experience, I have done this not because I don’t care for the moral standard, but rather because something else seems more important to me right then and there. That something is almost invariably a convenient or tempting circumstance.

This is exactly why Epictetus follows his praise of the respect for the moral law with a warning about listening to what others may say, or what they may do, or caring about anything else that is beyond our control. I will violate my own conscience and abandon my own convictions whenever I believe that I can make my conditions conform to my preferences.

But of course I cannot really give myself what is not within my power to give, and all I’ve done is trade my own virtue for a vain sense of utility. I will love the principle only until it is easier to ignore it, and care more for all the externals.

Most of us would likely say that honesty, for example, is a noble principle to follow. So many people I have spoken to over the years will claim that we should always tell the truth, because a man is no better than his word.

Then come the modifications and exceptions. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t tell the truth if it hurts someone’s feelings, or makes them uncomfortable or angry, or if it might cost me my job or makes me unpopular. After all, sometimes telling the truth will be very hard on us, and a few little lies here and there will make things easier.

Once we make excuses like that for ourselves, we are caring more for our circumstances than our characters. The principle isn’t really a measure of ruling our choices at all, because it becomes relative to how comfortable it may be. This is hardly Stoic, and it is hardly a life that looks to our own actions as the standard of our merit.

I should be honest with others, and hold it as a principle, out or respect for their right to know what properly concerns them, just as I would demand that same respect in return. That the truth will sometimes be difficult can always be tempered by the very love that inspires such honesty. I can teach myself to hold to the dignity of a principle when I remember to worry first and foremost for the excellence of my own action, regardless of what the world may throw back at me.

Many years ago, I knew someone who insisted that trust and commitment were at the root of friendship, but this person was quite often extremely dishonest and unreliable. My own frustrations could only be held at bay when I attempted to understand the thinking, however misguided, behind such a seeming contradiction. The principle would give way to external convenience, and I could hardly say I had never done the same myself.

Over the decades, my work would time and time again bring me face to face with the ugliness of sexual abuse. I would grow angry at the hypocrisy of the perpetrators, and even angrier at the cowardice of the enablers. Again, I have always needed to remember that I rule only my own principles and actions. This means that the only way I can try to make up for the wrongs of others is to strive for justice and courage myself. I will only fail if I compromise my conscience for comfort.

51. Where the rubber meets the road

How long will you wait to think yourself worthy of the highest and transgress in nothing the clear pronouncement of reason? You have received the precepts that you ought to accept, and you have accepted them.

Why then do you still wait for a master, that you may delay the amendment of yourself till he comes? You are a youth no longer, you are now a full-grown man. If now you are careless and indolent and are always putting off, fixing one day after another as the limit when you mean to begin attending to yourself, then, living or dying, you will make no progress but will continue unawares in ignorance.

Therefore make up your mind before it is too late to live as one who is mature and proficient, and let all that seems best to you be a law that you cannot transgress. And if you encounter anything troublesome or pleasant or glorious or inglorious, remember that the hour of struggle is come, the Olympic contest is here and you may put off no longer, and that one day and one action determines whether the progress you have achieved is lost or maintained.

This was how Socrates attained perfection, paying heed to nothing but reason, in all that he encountered. And if you are not yet Socrates, yet ought you to live as one who would wish to be a Socrates.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 51 (tr Matheson)

I was often quite confused about this mysterious process of “growing up” we were all supposed to be doing over the years. I still remember all the catch phrases, learning to be responsible and productive, or becoming someone who contributed and made a difference. My own college liked to speak about “serving others,” but I was often troubled that I didn’t see much of that.

I remembered how often we were inclined to selfishly serve ourselves as children, bragging and showing off to others, but too many of us still seemed to be doing much the same thing in our now adult professional lives. The trappings were different, but the game was normally the same, from the schoolyard to the conference room.

I did indeed find people who were doing some genuine growing up, who were transforming the very order of their lives, though they were not sold to us as the role models we should follow. The people who did inspire me were not interested in winning by dying with the most toys. They didn’t seek to rule fortune, to acquire power and position, but they simply sought to rule themselves. That process of growing up had never been just about raising the stakes in the game, but changing the very rules of the game.

The terms we use may sound the same, but the meaning is radically different. Responsibility is not having power over others, but having power over oneself. Productivity is measured not in the profit of wealth, but in the profit of character. Contributing is not giving to be seen as giving, but giving for its own sake. Making a difference is not being esteemed and remembered, but serving as a quiet example.

I have long suspected that most of us know exactly what we must do to live well. Genuine commitment, where the rubber meets the road, does not require heroic strength or superhuman ability. “Aqaba is over there. It’s only a matter of going.” I may wish to delay, to hedge my bets, to drain as much selfish gratification from life before I have to set things right. I must also remember that each and every moment could already be well too late to change course.

I once read a journal article on business ethics that argued how Socrates would have been the best captain of industry in our time, because he knew how to engage his customers, and he knew how to sell his product. I could only shake my head, because Socrates never saw his fellow men as customers, and he never had anything at all to sell. He had friends, and he wanted to share the true, the good, and the beautiful with them. That is why he was a grown-up.

52. Bungling the order

The first and most necessary department of philosophy deals with the application of principles; for instance, 'not to lie'.

The second deals with demonstrations; for instance, 'How comes it that one ought not to lie?'

The third is concerned with establishing and analyzing these processes; for instance, 'How comes it that this is a demonstration? What is demonstration, what is consequence, what is contradiction, what is true, what is false?'

It follows then that the third department is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. The first is the most necessary part, and that in which we must rest.

But we reverse the order: we occupy ourselves with the third, and make that our whole concern, and the first we completely neglect. Wherefore we lie, but are ready enough with the demonstration that lying is wrong.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 52 (tr Matheson)

One need not have suffered through the world of academia to have experienced this travesty. In education, in politics, in law, or in business, we love discussing the ideas, whether they are the right ideas, and all the possible reasons why they might be the right ideas. We hold colloquiums, we have conferences, we publish reputable articles, we hire experts and consultants, and through all of this we are neglecting the primary goal. What is the use of the idea if it isn’t going to be lived and practiced?

I suppose it is easier to think about what is right, than to actually do what is right. It is indeed essential to understand why something is true, and also to have a deeper sense of what even defines the truth itself. These are necessary and noble endeavors. I can hardly do the what without knowing the why. This does not excuse me to ponder the why without ever doing the what.

We are prone to bungling the order of life, and we give so much more priority to the thinking and talking about the truth than we give to the exercise of truth. Thinking exists for the sake of living, and living does not exist for the sake of thinking.

We can immediately identify the fraud and the charlatan, the typical hypocrite, because he will inevitably speak on all of his thoughts about virtue, but you will not actually see him practicing those virtues.

An old corny academic joke is that those who cannot do, teach. Those who cannot teach, teach others how to teach. Those who cannot teach others how to teach, become administrators. Those who cannot administer, are made members of the Board. I challenge you to find a single walk of life where the norm is any different.

Philosophy is, rightly understood, not a mere intellectual exercise, because it requires applying all that theory into concrete practice. The end is superior to the means. Don’t just tell me what you think, but show me how you live.

53.  Within my power

On every occasion we must have these thoughts at hand,

'Lead me, O Zeus, and lead me, Destiny,

Whither ordained is by your decree.

I'll follow, doubting not, or if with will

Recreant I falter, I shall follow still.'

-Cleanthes of Assos

'Who rightly with necessity complies

In things divine we count him skilled and wise.'

-Euripides, Fragment 965

'Well, Crito, if this be the gods’ will, so be it.'

-Plato, Crito, 43d

'Anytus and Meletus have power to put me to death, but not to harm me.'

-Plato, Apology, 30c

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 53 (tr Matheson)

The Handbook ends with these four quotations, and I suggest that we will only understand them, and why Epictetus chose them, if we apply the overall lesson of the entire text, a reflection upon the things in our power.

Appeals to the gods and to fate would often leave me cold, perhaps because they placed all things in forces I could not perceive, or perhaps because they made me look irrelevant in the order of all things. Indeed, it often seemed that being subsumed into an impersonal whole, left powerless and without hope, was the root of so many of my troubles. Whenever things didn’t go the way I wanted, I would far too readily wallow in despair.

There seemed to only be two options, to conquer the world or to be conquered by the world. Either it would have to be all about me, or I would have to be completely useless and disposable. The selfishness of the former disgusted me, and the pain of the latter terrified me.

The go-getters and achievers told me I needed to shape all other things to my will, and to never look back. This was sadly the attitude of the lost love of my life.

Fatalists, often of a certain religious sort, told me I just needed to blindly surrender myself to God, and to take my hands off the wheel. This was sadly the attitude of my lost friends during the Wilderness Years.

As is so often the case, I did not see the mean between the extremes. Stoicism helped me to understand that my own choices and actions did not exist apart from the order of all things, but rather existed within that order.

I began to see that the plan of Nature, of Providence, of God, in whatever way you wish to conceive it, was not something distant or invisible. I could see it right in front of me each and every day, in the simple fact that all things act for purpose, and that all situations and events have immediate meaning, if only we so choose to recognize it.

I began to see that my own existence was hardly insignificant, and no more or less important than anything else on the face of this Earth. Yet I only grasped this when I saw all the parts in harmony with the whole, instead of opposing the parts and the whole. I did not need to be forced, kicking and screaming, into the fullness of all things as they were. I could instead give my free and joyful “yes” to the world, and then also agree to assist in that wonderful beauty.

Destiny did not exclude me. Destiny had always been inviting me to share myself through my own choice. Providence was never a static thing, but a constant unfolding, and each of us has a part that is asked of us.

Zeus, for Cleanthes the personification of Providence, never trampled on my freedom. Instead, he asked to me to share in his power. I could learn to work with things, and not against them, while still being my own master. In my own daily thinking, this became something akin to a Tao of Stoicism.

If and when, especially when, I fail, out of my selfishness or cowardice, new pathways always reveal themselves. These are not written in the distant heavens, but to be found in the most immediate and humble ways. When I am too angry, Nature provides me direct means to find peace. When I feel hate, Nature offers me myriad ways to love. When I abandon hope, Nature always throws me a lifeline.

Even when I struggle and squirm, and I continue to resists, my very resistance becomes, by wonderful means, an opportunity for the greater good. The greater good need never exclude the lower, but will always find a way to include it.

When Socrates tells us that we must accept the will of the gods, he is not advocating defeatism. What seems to some such a great weakness is, in fact, a much greater strength. I need only return to the opening chapter of The Handbook. It is when I can distinguish between what is rightly within my power, and what is rightly outside of it, that I will find my proper place.

The world will unfold as it will unfold. I do not always immediately know why it does so, but my reason can determine that it is always for a purpose. Nature does not act in vain. It isn’t my place to be a ruler of Nature, but to be a participant in Nature.

This is exactly why Socrates understood that Anytus and Meletus could never harm him, even if they could kill him. I must be willing to surrender anything and everything that is beyond my power, but I can never lose that one piece, that essential piece, that is exclusively mine. You may choose to be a bad man, but you will never force me to be a bad man. Nature is invincible, and I am also invincible, whenever I freely share in Nature. That is within my power.