How did you view these misfortunes when they befell others?

Donald's Commentary on The Handbook of Epictetus #26

What the will of nature is may be learned from a consideration of the points in which we do not differ from one another. For example, when some other person’s slave-boy breaks his drinking-cup, you are instantly ready to say, “That’s one of the things which happen.” Rest assured, then, that when your own drinking-cup gets broken, you ought to behave in the same way that you do when the other man’s cup is broken. Apply now the same principle to the matters of greater importance. Some other person’s child or wife has died; no one but would say, “Such is the fate of man.” Yet when a man’s own child dies, immediately the cry is, “Alas! Woe is me!” But we ought to remember how we feel when we hear of the same misfortune befalling others.

Commentary

This is similar to what’s called the double-standards strategy in cognitive therapy, where we ask individuals to consider whether they may be judging themselves differently than they would judge others, or applying a different rule to themselves than to others.