It Is Our Judgments, Not Things
This week you are learning about one of the most foundational ideas in all of Stoic philosophy: that it is your judgments, not the things themselves, that disturb you. The Stoics called these judgments "hēgemonikon" (the ruling faculty of the mind) at the technical level, but the everyday name for the idea is simply this: your mental verdicts about events, not the events themselves, are the source of fear, grief, and craving. Once you see this clearly, facing fear stops being a matter of courage alone and becomes a matter of looking honestly at what your own mind is doing.
Passage
It is not the things themselves that disturb men, but their judgements about these things. For example, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates too would have thought so, but the judgement that death is dreadful, this is the dreadful thing. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never blame anyone but ourselves, that means, our own judgements. It is the part of an uneducated person to blame others where he himself fares ill; to blame himself is the part of one whose education has begun; to blame neither another nor his own self is the part of one whose education is already complete.
— Epictetus, Handbook 5
Reflection
Epictetus opens with a bold claim: death did not disturb Socrates; the judgment that death is dreadful is what disturbs people. This is the heart of the Stoic idea that our judgments, not things, are the source of our disturbance. A judgment here means the mental verdict you pass on an event, the story you tell yourself about what it means and whether it is terrible. Today is about recognizing that this verdict is something you are doing, not something the world is doing to you. That shift is the beginning of real education, in Epictetus's words, and the beginning of this week.
Go deeper
Think of something you are currently afraid of: what exact verdict has your mind passed on that thing, and where did that verdict actually come from?
Practice
Name the Verdict
Bring to mind one thing you have been anxious or worried about lately. Write two sentences: first, describe the situation as bare fact, with no adjectives about how bad it is. Second, write out the judgment your mind has added on top of that fact. Notice the gap between the two sentences. That gap is where your disturbance lives.