What Is in Our Power
This week you are going to sit with one of the most demanding ideas in Stoic thought: the distinction between what is genuinely yours and what is not. That line is easy to draw in the abstract and surprisingly hard to hold in real life, especially when things you care about are on the wrong side of it. Each day builds on the last, moving from first principles through practical tests and honest complications, until by Saturday you are ready to make a real commitment about how you want to live with this idea.
Passage
SOME THINGS are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things under our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; while the things not under our control are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and not our own. Remember, therefore, that if what is naturally slavish you think to be free, and what is not your own to be your own, you will be hampered, will grieve, will be in turmoil, and will blame both gods and men; while if you think only what is your own to be your own, and what is not your own to be, as it really is, not your own, then no one will ever be able to exert compulsion upon you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, will find fault with no one, will do absolutely nothing against your will, you will have no personal enemy, no one will harm you, for neither is there any harm that can touch you. With such high aims, therefore, remember that you must bestir yourself with no slight effort to lay hold of them, but you will have to give up some things entirely, and defer others for the time being. But if you wish for these things also, and at the same time for both office and wealth, it may be that you will not get even these latter, because you aim also at the former, and certainly you will fail to get the former, which alone bring freedom and happiness. Make it, therefore, your study at the very outset to say to every harsh external impression, “You are an external impression and not at all what you appear to be.” After that examine it and test it by these rules which you have, the first and most important of which is this: Whether the impression has to do with the things which are under our control, or with those which are not under our control; and, if it has to do with some one of the things not under our control, have ready to hand the answer, “It is nothing to me.”
— Epictetus, Handbook 1
Reflection
Epictetus opens with the most basic and most radical claim he ever makes: everything splits into two piles, yours and not yours, and almost everything you spend your day worrying about lands in the second pile. Your body, your reputation, what other people think or do, whether you get the promotion or the diagnosis, none of it is yours in the Stoic sense. What is yours is something much smaller and much more durable: how you conceive of things, what you choose, what you desire, what you push away. Notice that Epictetus does not say the second pile is unimportant. He says treating it as yours is what produces grief, turmoil, and the habit of blaming. Today is about getting the map clear before you try to navigate.
Go deeper
Think of one specific thing you blamed someone else for this past week: what exactly were you treating as 'yours' that Epictetus would say was never yours to begin with?
Practice
The Two-Column Inventory
Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left write 'Mine'; on the right write 'Not Mine'. Spend seven minutes listing every worry, hope, or grievance currently on your mind, placing each item in the correct column according to Epictetus's test: is this my conception, choice, desire, or aversion, or is it something that can be hindered or taken away by outside forces? Do not edit yourself. At the end, just read the two columns and notice which one is longer.