One Powerful Lesson From Epictetus That Will Change How You See Your Life

Advice from one of the greatest Stoic philosophers.

The great philosopher Epictetus did not write any book. It was a student of his who did.

Arrian of Nicomedia was that young man who did it. He took notes from Epictetus’s lectures.

The notes were so successful that Arrian edited them under the name Discourses of Epictetus.

Later he elaborated his famous Enchiridion of Epictetus. And thanks to this, the wisdom of this great Stoic philosopher reached our days.

His teachings are still popular because they speak directly to our hearts on topics that matter: happiness, friendship, sincerity, fairness, consistency.

But who was this man who taught the young Arrian?

Epictetus was born in Hierapolis between the years 50 and 55. He was a slave from his childhood (most likely, his parents sold him for that purpose).

Epaphroditus was one of Epictetus’ masters. This master had first been a slave and then a freedman in the service of the emperor Nero.

Some say that Epaphroditus tortured Epictetus and hence the famous limp of the philosopher.

But he was fortunate that his master allowed him to attend the classes given by the philosopher Musonius Rufus. That’s when he got a taste for philosophy.

The story had a happy ending because Epaphroditus finally granted Epictetus his freedom.

Why am I telling you this?

You have to know a little about Epictetus’ life to understand his way of thinking.

On the one hand, he was a slave whom his master tortured assiduously, and on the other hand, he studied philosophy. And this philosophy helped him to bear stoically the torments he suffered.

His work speaks a lot about freedom because it was what he longed for the most.

That is why, in today’s article, we are going to analyze, point by point, one of those principles that made Epictetus shine throughout history.

-I+I Quote

The one who ignores who he is and what he was born for. The one who is ignorant of what world he is in and with what companions. The one who does not know what is good and what is wrong. The one who ignores what is honest and what is clumsy. He who does not understand reasoning or demonstration. He is not able to know what is true or false. He will not desire according to nature. He will not reject or feel impulses, nor will he apply himself.

He will not assent. Shall not deny. It will not suspend judgment. It will go about deaf and blind, seeming to be someone. But being no one.

— Epictetus.

I. Who we are and where we come from

Birth conditions our life.

Being born in New York is not the same as being born in Bangladesh. Being born into a wealthy family is not the same as being born into a poor family.

And this is something that we continually forget.

The problem is that we tend to compare ourselves with others when there is no balanced comparison. We were all born under different circumstances, and this makes us diverse.

I am not talking about assuming limitations but accepting realities.

Why?

Because you have to.

The sooner you burst your bubble of unreality, the sooner you will get down to work.

Imagine you have a dream of going to college.

To fulfill that dream will require you to go one way or another, depending on your circumstances.

If your parents have money, it will probably be enough for you to apply yourself in school to get good grades.

If your parents do not have money, you will probably need a scholarship, and you will have to find out what requirements you must meet. Maybe in your country, they don’t give you scholarships, and you will have to assume that you will have to work part-time to pay for your studies.

Do you see what I’m getting at?

Knowing where you come from and accepting your circumstances makes you maximize the use of your most valuable resource: time.

If you don’t go through the world fantasizing and walk with your feet on the ground, you will achieve your dreams sooner because you will know the steps you have to take to make them come true.

Another point is to know who we really are.

Birth also determines what kind of information will come to us at a young age.

We inherit our parents’ prejudices. And this is something that we don’t understand until later in life.

We have to look inside to discern which thoughts are ours. And which are conditioned by the environment in which we grew up.

It’s vital doing this in order not to live the life that others want us to live. Because by discovering who we are, we will know what kind of life we want to live.

Many people say they don’t know what their life purpose is. And they feel bad about it.

To all those people, I say that what really matters is to learn to listen to yourself. Because if you do that, sooner or later, that inner voice will tell you what it wants, and that is a life purpose.

If you don’t know yourself, how can you know what you want?

To know what you want, you first have to know yourself.

II. Who are our friends, and what is the world around us like

This is another detail. The world that sells us in advertising is not the real world. The real world has a series of social pacts that you have to respect if you don’t want it to turn against you.

For example,

A 21st-century man cannot go through life treating women as they did in the 1950s. Because no woman wants our paternalism.

Codes of conduct and social etiquette, fortunately, evolve with time. And one has to know what they are because we are social animals and to progress in society, we have to know and respect its norms.

On the other hand, you have to know with whom you share the road.

Friendships can be good or bad influences, and our success in life depends on them.

Social relationships make a difference.

The famous Harvard study on adult development conducted over 75 years, which analyzed the lives of 724 men, concluded that people who were happier with their friendships at age 50 were healthier at age 80 than those who proved to be unhappier.

In addition, people who had good friendships at the age of fifty, when they reached old age, endured physical pain better than those who had not had satisfactory personal relationships.

In the end, it seems that Epictetus and the rest of the Stoics have been proved right by science.

III. What is good and what is bad

Knowing how to differentiate between what is wrong and what is good is a virtue. Because it is very complicated.

Why is it complicated?

Because it is relative.

That is to say, one thing is what is good for society and quite another what is good for you.

Let me give you an example,

Your parents may want you to be a lawyer, and yet you dream of being a writer. They think that if you dedicate yourself to writing, you will end up starving. That’s why they insist that you become a lawyer.

Your parents want good for you.

Let’s imagine you listen to them and go to law school and end up being a partner in a big law firm with a lot of money and all that stuff.

You’re not starving. You did what your parents thought was good for you, but maybe you feel like shooting yourself in the head because you can’t stand your life.

• You can’t stand being a lawyer.
• You can’t stand that you gave up your dream.
• You can’t stand having grown old being a person you hate.
• You can’t stand having allowed others to choose for you what life you had to live.

And in the end, what was “supposed to be good” ends up being the wrong way.

Maybe being a writer, you would have gone through economic hardship, and you would have had to work washing dishes.

But maybe that bohemian life of washing dishes during the day and writing at night would have made you very happy. Even a successful author.

This is what Robert Green did.

Before becoming an author, Green says he held 80 different jobs. He worked as a builder, a translator, washing dishes, a screenwriter, etc.

Byung-Chul Han tricked his parents to leave Korea and go to Germany to supposedly study metallurgy. But he planned to study philosophy and literature.

Today he is considered one of the world’s leading philosophers.

But his path was not easy. The author says that when he arrived in Germany, he had so little money that he survived by eating bread and jam.

Bottom line. What’s good for you may not be good for others. But you have to develop the character necessary to follow the designs of your heart.

You live your life, don’t forget that.

Final thoughts

At the end of Epictetus’ sentence. The author tells us the following,

The one who ignores what is honest and what is clumsy. He who does not understand reasoning or demonstration. He is not able to know what is true or false. He will not desire according to nature. He will not reject or feel impulses, nor will he apply himself.

He will not assent. Shall not deny. It will not suspend judgment. It will go about deaf and blind, seeming to be someone. But being no one.

And it is true. As we have seen in the previous points.

• If you are not aware of your origins and compare yourself with others, you will only get confused.
• If you don’t invest time knowing yourself, you won’t discover what you want to do with your life.
• If you don’t know the world you live in, you won’t achieve anything no matter how much you know yourself.
• If you don’t know the difference between a good friend and a bad friend, you will suffer.
• If you don’t dare to choose what is good for you because you confuse it with what is good for others, you will end up living the life that someone else chose for you.

And according to the above, you will be a puppet who refuses nothing and goes through the world doing what he is ordered to do, appearing to be someone but being empty inside.

If you have read to the end of the article, I want to thank you for your support. I hope this article has helped you. If so, let me know in the comments. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for reading. Alberto García (Malafama1981).

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