Epictetus on the dichotomy of control: Enchiridion Part 1

Executive overview

Most unhappiness comes from trying to control things outside your power. Epictetus divides all things into two categories: what is "up to us" and what is not. Freedom and happiness follow from focusing only on what is yours to control.

Only your own judgements, desires, and responses are truly yours — everything else belongs to others.

The two categories: what is and isn't in our control

• In our control: opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion — our own actions and responses
• Not in our control: body, property, reputation, external outcomes
• Things in our control are by nature free; things outside it are weak and belong to others
• Treating external things as your own leads to hindrance, grief, and resentment
• Treating them correctly means no one can compel or harm you

Desire, aversion, and how to apply the framework

• Aversion directed at things outside your control guarantees wretchedness
• Redirect aversion only to things contrary to your own nature — what you can govern
• Suppress desire for now: anything you desire outside your control will disappoint
• When an appearance disturbs you, examine it first by asking: is this in my control?
• If it is not in your control, it is nothing to you

Attachment and the practice of letting go

• When you value a cup, remind yourself it is just a cup in general — then its breaking won't disturb you
• When you love a person, remind yourself they are mortal — then loss won't destroy you
• Before any action, picture what normally happens; set your goal as keeping your mind conformable to nature, not just completing the task
• If something interrupts the action, you haven't failed — your real aim was inner composure

Disturbance comes from within, not from events

• Men are disturbed not by things but by the principles they form about things
• Death is not terrible; the terror is in our notion that it is terrible
• The uninstructed blame others for their suffering; the partly instructed blame themselves; the fully instructed blame neither
• Don't take pride in what isn't yours — a horse's beauty is the horse's good, not yours

The ship analogy: non-attachment in practice

• Life is like being on a voyage at anchor; enjoy small pleasures on shore but keep attention on the ship
• When the captain calls, leave everything immediately — wife, child, onion alike
• If you are old, stay close to the ship; don't risk being unable to return in time
• Don't demand things happen as you wish; wish they happen as they do

On sickness, lameness, and every obstacle

• Sickness hinders the body, not your ability to choose — unless you make it so
• Lameness hinders the leg, not your will
• Every accident carries within it a faculty you can exercise: pain calls for fortitude, unpleasant words call for patience, temptation calls for self-restraint
• Habituate this response and appearances will lose their power to carry you away

Returning what was given, not losing it

• Never say "I have lost it" — say "I have returned it"
• A child who dies is returned; an estate taken away is returned
• The giver assigns who takes it back; that is not your concern
• Hold what is given as a traveller holds a hotel room: with care but without ownership

Freedom and the dinner party

• Whoever can give or remove what you wish has mastery over you
• To be free: wish for nothing and decline nothing that depends on others
• At the feast of life, take your share with moderation when it comes to you; don't grasp for what hasn't arrived
• Those who can even refuse what is set before them become partners not just in the feast but in the empire of the gods