🏛️ If you are looking for Stoic life coaching, I now offer it (both group and individual) in my Skool community “Prokoptôn.” You may join early, as a founding member, by clicking here and signing up.
It wasn’t ever going to be around forever.
If you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you kiss things which are only human (and mortal), and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.
This is one of those passages that makes people think Stoics are cold.
"Just tell yourself your dead child is a cup? That's your advice? Are you outside of your f*cking mind?"
But Epictetus isn't asking us not to care (or to literally think of our loved ones as ceramic cups); he's asking us to care appropriately.
Our favourite cup is a preferred indifferent thing. Meaning that it's nice to have and we’re allowed to enjoy it and feel sweetly about it.
But when it breaks (and it will, because it's ceramic and we're clumsy and that's how the world works) we have a choice. We can treat the loss as a catastrophe, or we can recognise that what we lost was a cup, not a piece of our character.
This scales up, infinitely. Plans fall through. Jobs end. Friendships shift. Loved ones pass.
All of these events matter, but the degree to which they devastate us is usually a function of how much we've confused a preferred indifferent with an actual good.
😡 Tanner, say more, because I’m about to unsubscribe in protest of this nonsense! Why is Epictetus being such a jerk?
Okay, let’s be a little long-winded today. The reason Epictetus is saying something so inflammatory (and he knew he was doing it) is to make a point that isn’t delivered in this particular part of the Enchiridion. Note: the Enchiridion is basically a book of quotes from Arrian of Nicomedia who transcribed what he thought were important parts of Epictetus’s lectures.
Within the broader curriculum Epictetus would have been teaching is likely to have been this point: if we don’t have reasonable expectations about loss and its inevitability, we risk corrupting our character in our grief.
Example: if we view death as an evil, then we may seek revenge on the surgeons who were unable to save our spouse following her horrific car accident.
Grief is a major threat to our aims as Stoics: to live morally excellent lives. It is best then to have a proper framing of death and loss ahead of time so that we can keep our way when they inevitably cross our path.
Today's suggestion: Think of something we're currently clinging to a bit too tightly (a plan, an outcome, a possession). Try reminding ourselves what category it falls into. It might still be worth pursuing. But perhaps it's worth holding a little more loosely.
Stay hungry. Stay wise. Eat brekkie.
