The Book of Epictetus 1 · The daily drill. Written down by Arrian, from his lecture room
Epictetus, born at Hierapolis in Phrygia about the year 55, died at Nicopolis in Greece about 135. He was born a slave, belonging to a freedman of Nero’s household. While still a slave he was allowed to attend lectures, and was later freed. He was lame in one leg. About 93 the philosophers were expelled from Rome and he went to Greece, opened a school at Nicopolis, and stayed there for the rest of his life. The fence is already set in Covenant 5, and this book does not set it again. What this book says is where the fence runs: not around events, but around your judgement of them. He wrote nothing himself; what is here his student Arrian took down in the lecture room. (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.48)
1.1My whole school has one root. Set this one and the rest stand with it; leave it unset and the rest are empty words.
1.2The things there are fall into two heaps. One is up to you, one is not.
1.3Up to you: how you take a thing, what you want, what you avoid, whether you act. In a word — whatever is your own doing.
1.4Not up to you: your body, your property, your reputation, your office. In a word — whatever is not your own doing.
1.5The heap that is up to you is by nature free: it cannot be blocked, cannot be stopped, cannot be taken from you.
1.6The heap that is not up to you is by nature weak: it will be blocked, it will be taken, and it belonged to others all along.
1.7Now hear the part that matters. Nearly all human suffering comes of putting the two heaps in the wrong places.
1.8If you take what is another’s to be yours, you will certainly be blocked, you will lament, you will churn inside, and you will blame gods and men.
1.9If you take only what is yours to be yours, no one will compel you and no one will block you.
1.10You will blame no one, accuse no one, and do nothing you do not wish to do.
1.11You will have no enemy, because no one can harm you.
1.12Someone hearing this says: then can I do nothing at all?
1.13The opposite. Draw your strength back from where it cannot reach and stake all of it where it can, and you will get more done, not less. (cf. The Highest Covenant 5.3)
1.14Take me as the example. My leg is lame. People see me walk and are sorry for me.
1.15What is lame is my leg. It is not the part of me that wants, avoids, and takes things one way or another.
1.16That part no one can touch — not even the man who once owned me as property.
1.17Say this sentence over every single thing that goes against you. Say it until it has become the phrase you reach for.