Your Work as a Human Being
This week you will think carefully about what it means to do the work you were made for. The seven passages move from self-knowledge to social responsibility to integration, asking you to hold two things together at once: the particular shape of your own nature and the larger human calling that no one gets to skip. By Saturday you will have a clearer sense of what those two things demand of you, together.
Passage
And next we must remember who we are, and what is our designation, and must endeavour to direct our actions, in the performance of our duties, to meet the possibilities of our social relations.
— Epictetus, Discourses 4.12.16
Reflection
Epictetus compresses the whole problem into one sentence, and it is easy to read too quickly. Notice what he actually says: we must remember who we are AND what our designation is. These are two different things. Who you are is your particular character and capacity. Your designation is the role you occupy in relation to others. Duties, he says, must be directed to meet the possibilities of your social relations. That word 'possibilities' matters: he is not asking you to ignore your limits, but to find where your nature and your relationships can actually meet.
Go deeper
In your current social relations, which ones are you performing a role that genuinely fits who you are, and which ones are you playing a part that belongs to someone else's idea of you?
Practice
Two Columns
Draw a line down the middle of a page. On the left, write 'Who I am' and list four or five honest descriptors of your actual character and capacities, not aspirations, not what others say, but what you know to be true. On the right, write 'What is expected of me' and list the roles and duties currently making claims on your time. Spend five minutes looking at where the two sides align and where they pull apart. You do not need to resolve anything today.