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And yet, while there is only the one thing we can care for and devote ourselves to, we choose instead to care about and attach ourselves to a score of others: to our bodies, to our property, to our family, friends and slaves. [15] And, being attached to many things, we are weighed down and dragged along with them.
Make the best use of what is in our power, and treat the rest in accordance with its nature. And what is its nature? However God decides.
What should we have ready at hand in a situation like this? The knowledge of what is mine and what is not mine, what I can and cannot do. [22] I must die. But must I die bawling? I must be put in chains – but moaning and groaning too? I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed?
Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable.
In short, reflection will show that people are put off by nothing so much as what they think is unreasonable, and attracted to nothing more than what to them seems reasonable. [5] But standards of reasonableness and unreasonableness vary from one person to the next – just as we consider different things good or bad, harmful or beneficial. [6] Which is why education has no goal more important than bringing our preconception of what is reasonable and unreasonable in alignment with nature.
In short, we do not abandon any discipline for despair of ever being the best in it.
Make it your goal never to fail in your desires or experience things you would rather avoid; try never to err in impulse and repulsion; aim to be perfect also in the practice of attention and withholding judgement.
A student should practise how to expunge from his life sighs and sorrow, grief and disappointment, exclamations like ‘poor me’ and ‘alas’; [24] he should learn what death is, as well as exile, jail and hemlock, so at the end of the day he can say, like Socrates in prison, ‘Dear Crito, if it pleases the gods, so be it,’
For what else are tragedies but the ordeals of people who have come to value externals, tricked out in tragic verse?
What would have become of Hercules, do you think, if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar – and no savage criminals to rid the world of? [33] What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back
to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules. And even if he had, what good would it have done him? [34] What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir him into action?
In general every talent when it gets into the hands of the morally weak comes with the risk of making them conceited and full of themselves.
Look, if you get it, then you will have it; if not, you will depart this life: the door is open. Why complain? What place is there left for tears? What occasion for flattery? Why should one man envy another? Why should he admire those who have many possessions, or those who are strong in power and quick to anger? [21] What can they do to us, or for us, after all? The things they have power to do are of no interest to us; and as for the things we do care about, these they are powerless to affect. No one with convictions of this kind can be made to act against their will.
Freedom is something good and valuable; to arbitrarily wish for things to happen that arbitrarily seem to you best∗ is not good, it’s disgraceful.
You ought to realize, you take up very little space in the world as a whole – your body, that is; in reason, however, you yield to no one, not even to the gods, because reason is not measured in size
but sense.
You should thank the gods for making you strong enough to survive what you cannot control, and only responsible for what you can. [33] The gods have released you from accountability for your parents, your siblings, your body, your possessions – for death and for life itself. [34] They made you responsible only for what is in your power – the proper use of impressions. [35] So why take on the burden of matters which you cannot answer for? You are only making unnecessary problems for yourself.
‘Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on∗ matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.’
‘Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes or figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower,
Rome wasn’t built in a day
‘What about if someone threatens me with death, though; surely he compels me then?’ ‘It isn’t what you’re threatened with – it’s the fact that you prefer to do anything rather than die. [26] It’s your set of values that compelled you: will acting on will.
Who are you to use those common curses, like ‘These damned fools,’ etc.? [11] Let them be. Since when are you so intelligent as to go around correcting other people’s mistakes?†
We should discipline ourselves in small things, and from there progress to things of greater value. [19] If you have a headache, practise not cursing. Don’t curse every time you have an earache. And I’m not saying that you can’t complain, only don’t complain with your whole being.
When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.
Call them up before us. ‘What do you say, Agamemnon? Shouldn’t we do what is right and proper?’ ‘Naturally.’ [6] ‘What about you, Achilles? Wouldn’t you, of all people, say that we ought to do what is appropriate?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘All right, then, apply your preconceptions.’ [7] It is just here that conflict starts.
‘This, then, is the beginning of philosophy – an awareness of one’s own mental fitness. Consciousness of its weakness will keep you from tackling difficult subjects.
Who is there left for me to fear, and over what has he control? Not what is in my power, because no one controls that except myself. As for what is not in my power, in that I take no interest.
[24] What philosophy has taught me, though, is to be indifferent to events beyond the will’s control. [25] Haven’t you profited in this respect too? So don’t look for help from philosophy except in areas where you have learned that help from it can be found.
‘Hold it, though – doesn’t nature intend women to be shared?11 I grant it – but in the way a roast is shared among dinner guests. Very well, after each guest has received his share, if you feel like it, why not grab your neighbour’s portion too? Steal it when he’s not looking, or just stretch out your hand and grab all you can manage to put away. If you can’t actually snatch the meat, at least wipe your hands on it, and lick the grease off your fingers. What fine company you will make – just like Socrates’ fellow diners in the Symposium.’12
So in life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? [5] In me, in my choices. Don’t ever speak of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘advantage’ or ‘harm’, and so on, of anything that is not your responsibility.
But then the boat actually begins to sink. What are my options? I do the only thing I am in a position to do, drown – but fearlessly, without bawling or crying out to God, because I know that what is born must also die. [13] I am not Father Time; I’m a human being, a part of the whole, like an hour in a day. Like the hour I must abide my time, and like the hour, pass. [14] What difference does it make whether I go by drowning or disease? I have to go somehow.
When happiness is come by fairly, others are happy for us too.
The same applies to subjects that require some practical training; don’t pretend you have a particular skill if you don’t yet; yield to whoever has the requisite experience; and for your own part take satisfaction in an awareness that your persistence is helping you become expert in the subject yourself.
everything is ‘circumstances’. But if you mean ‘problems’, where’s the problem in something that was born, dying? [18] Death could come by way of a knife, torture, the sea, a piece of masonry, a despot – why do you care? ‘All roads to Hades are of equal length.’
shouldn’t I wrong him in order to hurt myself in retaliation?’
That is the way things are weighed and disagreements settled – when standards are established. [24] Philosophy aims to test and set such standards.
Among the poets, too, one of the highest forms of compliment is conveyed in the line: He could cut short a quarrel, however great, with his diplomacy.30
‘Please, God,’ we say, ‘relieve me of my anxiety.’ Listen, stupid, you have hands, God gave them to you himself. You might as well get on your knees and pray that your nose won’t run. A better idea would be to wipe your nose and forgo the prayer.
Again, in an earthquake, I am prone to picture the whole city coming down on top of me, whereas, in fact, a single brick is enough to dash my brains out. [24] So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously.
[28] look to your own means, leave everything that isn’t yours alone. Make use of what material advantages you have, don’t regret the ones you were not allowed. If any of them are recalled, let go of them willingly, grateful for the time you had to enjoy them
The first thing a pretender to philosophy must do is get rid of their presuppositions; a person is not going to undertake to learn anything that they think they already know.
you can’t hope to make progress in areas where you have made no application.
this presumption that you possess knowledge of any use has to be dropped before you approach philosophy
Never be harsh, remember Plato’s dictum: ‘Every soul is deprived of the truth against its will.’83
The body is the raw material of the doctor and physical therapist. Land is the farmer’s raw material. The raw material of the good man is his mind – his goal being to respond to impressions the way nature intended.
‘Being healthy is good, being sick is bad.’ No, my friend: enjoying health in the right way is good; making bad use of your health is bad. ‘So even illness can benefit us?’ [5] Why not,
For my part, I can say, ‘bring what challenge you please and I will turn it to good account: bring illness, death, poverty, slander, a judgement of death: they will all be converted to advantage by my wand of Hermes.’
Friends, the school of a philosopher is a hospital. When you leave, you should have suffered, not enjoyed yourself. Because you enter, not in a state of health,
Free is the person who lives as he wishes and cannot be coerced, impeded or compelled, whose impulses cannot be thwarted, who always gets what he desires and never has to experience what he would rather avoid.
Those are the reflections you should recur to morning and night. Start with things that are least valuable and most liable to be lost – things such as a jug or a glass – and proceed to apply the same ideas to clothes, pets, livestock, property; then to yourself, your body, the body’s parts, your children, your siblings and your wife. [112] Look on every side and mentally discard them. Purify your thoughts, in case of an attachment or devotion to something that doesn’t belong to you and will hurt to have wrenched away. [113] And as you exercise daily, as you do at the gym, do not say that you
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[129] The person who renounces externals cannot be hindered, as externals are things that are not within our power either to have or not to have – or to have in the condition we might like. [130] Externals include the body and its members, as well as material goods. If you grow attached to any of them as if they were your own, you will incur the penalties prescribed for a thief. [131] This is the road that leads to liberty, the only road that delivers us from slavery: finally to be able to say, with meaning: Lead me, Zeus, lead me, Destiny, to the goal I was long ago assigned
