II.5. On Handling Difficulty

Using a game of dice and a game of ball, Epictetus teaches you to play hard without confusing the score with who you are. This may be the most practical picture of the careful life in the whole book.

Material things are neither good nor bad, but how we handle them is not neutral.

How, then, can a person keep the steady and calm mind, and with it the careful spirit that is not random or hasty?

You can do it if you copy those who play dice.

Counters and dice are neither good nor bad. How do I know what is going to turn up? My business is to use what does turn up with care and skill.

In the same way, this is the main business of life: draw distinctions between things, weigh them one against the other, and say:

"Outward things are not in my power. My will is my own. Where do I look for what is good and what is evil? Within me, among my own possessions."

You must never use the word good or evil, or benefit or injury, or any such word, about things that belong to other people.

"Do you mean, then, that outward things should be used without care?"

Not at all. That too would be an evil for the will, and would go against its nature.

They must be used with care, because their use is not neutral. At the same time, they must be used with steadiness and calm, because in themselves they are neither good nor bad.

Where the true value of things is concerned, no one can block me or force me. I am subject to blocking and force only in matters that are not in my power to win, matters that are neither good nor bad in themselves, but can be dealt with well or badly, and that rests with me.

It is hard to join these qualities: the care of a man who gives himself to material things, and the steadiness of one who pays them no mind. Hard, but not impossible. Otherwise, it would be impossible to be happy.

We act very much as if we were on a voyage. What can I do?

I can choose the helmsman, the sailors, the day, the moment.

Then a storm arises. So what? My task is done. Now the helmsman has to act.

Say the ship goes down. What can I do then? I do only what lies in my power.

If I must drown, I drown. No panic. No shouting at the sky.

I know anything born must also die. I am not immortal. I am a man, a part of the universe, the way an hour is part of the day. Like an hour, I have to be here. Like an hour, I have to pass.

What does it matter to me, then, how I pass, by drowning or by fever, since I have to pass somehow?

You will see that those who play ball with skill behave in this way.

None of them argues whether the ball is good or bad, only how to strike it and how to receive it.

The balance of play comes from this. Skill, speed, good judgment come from this: while I cannot catch the ball, even if I spread my garment for it, the expert catches it when I throw it.

If we catch or strike the ball with hurry or fear, what good is the game? How will anyone stay in it and see how it works out?

One will say, "Strike." Another will say, "Do not strike." Another will say, "You have had one stroke." That is fighting instead of playing.

In that sense, Socrates knew how to play the game. What do I mean? He knew how to play in the court.

"Tell me, Anytus," he said, "in what way you say that I disbelieve in God. What do you think divinities are? Are they not either children of the gods, or the mixed offspring of gods and men?"

When Anytus agreed, he said, "Who, then, do you think can believe in the existence of mules and not in asses?"

He was like someone playing at ball. What ball did he play with? Life, imprisonment, exile, taking poison, losing his wife, leaving his children without a father.

These were the things he played with. Nonetheless, he played and tossed the ball with balance.

So we ought to play the game, so to speak, with all possible care and skill, and still treat the ball itself as neither good nor bad.

A person must certainly grow in skill when it comes to some outward things. He need not value a thing for its own sake, but he should show his skill in handling it, whatever it is.

The weaver does not make fleeces. He works with them in whatever form he gets them.

Your food and your property are given to you by another, who can also take them from you, yes, and your little body as well.

It is up to you, then, to take what is given and make the most of it.

If you come off without harm, others who meet you will rejoice with you at your safety. The one who has a good eye for conduct, if he sees that you behaved with honor, will praise you and rejoice with you. If he sees a man who has saved his life by acting without honor, he will do the opposite.

Where a person can rejoice with reason, his neighbor can rejoice with him also.

How is it, then, that some outward things are called natural and some unnatural? It is because we look at ourselves as cut off from the rest of the universe.

For the foot, I will say it is natural to be clean.

If you take it as a foot and not as a separated thing, it will be fitting for it to walk in the mud, and to tread upon thorns, and sometimes to be cut off for the sake of the whole body.

Otherwise it will cease to be a foot. We must hold exactly the same kind of view about ourselves.

What are you? A man.

If you look at yourself as a separate being, it is natural for you to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy.

If you look at yourself as a man and a part of a larger whole, that whole makes it fitting that at one moment you fall ill, at another go on a voyage and risk your life, at another are at your wit's end, and may even die before your time.

Why, then, are you indignant? Don't you know that, just as the foot we spoke of, if looked at by itself, will cease to be a foot, so you will cease to be a man?

What is a man? Part of a city. First, part of the city where gods and men are joined as one. Second, part of the city that has the next claim to that name, which is a small copy of the universal one.

"What," you say, "am I now to be put on my trial?" Is someone else, then, to have a fever? Someone else to go on a voyage? Someone else to die? Someone else to be condemned?

I say events of this sort have to happen, in a body like ours, in this enveloping space, in this common life, one to this man and another to that.

Your business, then, is to take what fate brings, and deal with what happens, as is fitting.

Suppose, then, the judge says, "I will judge you to be a wrongdoer."

You reply, "May it go well with you. I did my part. It is for you to see if you have done yours. The judge's part too, do not forget, has its own danger."