What is up to you

The Enchiridion is a short manual, and it opens by cutting the world in two. Some things are in our power and some are not ^[1]. In our power are opinion, desire, aversion and, in a word, whatever are our acts; not in our power are the body, property, reputation and office ^[1].

Epictetus was born into slavery and later taught in Nicopolis; his lectures were written down by his pupil Arrian ^[2].

Epictetus says the things in our power are free by nature, and the things that are not are weak, slavish and in the power of others ^[1]. If you take the second kind for your own, he warns, you will be hindered and will lament; if you take only what is yours as yours, no one will compel or harm you ^[1].

That is a claim about where to put your attention, and it asks for effort. The Enchiridion adds that you must leave some things alone entirely and postpone others, because you cannot reach for such large things with a small effort ^[1].

The next step is to notice what actually upsets you. Epictetus says men are disturbed not by the things that happen but by their opinions about them, and that when we are impeded or grieved we should blame our own opinions, not other people ^[1].

Marcus Aurelius, an emperor born while Epictetus was still alive, says the same thing in his own words. When an outside thing pains you, he writes, it is your judgment about it that disturbs you, and it is in your power to wipe that judgment out ^[3][4].

Seneca takes the idea into everyday fear. In Letter 13 he tells his friend Lucilius that we suffer more often in imagination than in reality, and he says he is speaking in a milder style than the strict Stoic one ^[5].

In Long's selection from the Discourses, Epictetus asks what a person should have ready when trouble comes, and answers: what is mine and what is not ^[1]. He pictures a tyrant's threats one by one: you may put me in chains, but my will cannot be overpowered ^[1].

In Letter 18 Seneca suggests a rehearsal. Set aside a few days of the plainest food and roughest clothes, and ask yourself whether this is the condition you feared; he writes that it is in times free from care that the soul should toughen itself against what may come ^[5].

None of this means the Stoics thought health, wealth or pleasure were worthless. They taught that virtue is the only good, and that such external things are neither good nor bad in themselves but have value as material for virtue to act upon ^[6]. The next chapter is about that virtue.