Do not wish for things that are not up to you...
Donald's Commentary on The Handbook of Epictetus #14
If you make it your will that your children and your wife and your friends should live forever, you are silly; for you are making it your will that things not under your control should be under your control, and that what is not your own should be your own. In the same way, too, if you make it your will that your slave-boy be free from faults, you are a fool; for you are making it your will that vice be not vice, but something else. If, however, it is your will not to fail in what you desire, this is in your power. Wherefore, exercise yourself in that which is in your power. Each man’s master is the person who has the authority over what the man wishes or does not wish, so as to secure it, or take it away. Whoever, therefore, wants to be free, let him neither wish for anything, nor avoid anything, that is under the control of others; or else he is necessarily a slave.
Commentary
If we’re to embrace reason then we have to be brutally honest with ourselves about everything. Yet the majority of us live in denial of the fact that life is fleeting and the things and people we love will one day be gone. The Stoics believe that if we’re completely realistic about this, though, we’ll actually be able to love others more honestly and with wisdom as well as natural affection.
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