Got It?

Unfortunately death is something that we might never the accustomed to, even though it is our judgments that are dreadful, death creates sadness, loneliness and sorrow. Sadly, there are not many people that follow the teachings of the Handbook of Epictetus, nor of the many other philosophical books, and do grief when there is death. The loss of a loved one is one of the most painful sensations. No matter how much we know about life and how it should be lived. Section 21 states that, “ Let death and exile and everything that is terrible appear before your eyes every day, especially death; and you will never have anything contemptible in your thoughts or crave anything excessively.” There is no way to avoid death or exile. Something that you can do is try not to avoid it. I think that is way Epictetus is trying to day with this section, death will happen, just try not to avoid it because you can’t and if you don’t try to avoid then when it comes it does not hit you that hard.

When pain happens to you, we usually ask ourselves, “why me?” and question “why not him? Or her?” There is no point of argument. Everybody has a different director of their own play. Epictetus says that, “you cannot demand an equal shade if you did not do the same things, with a view to getting things that are not up to us.” (Section 25) Everybody has something that is up to them, and that is not up to us, what is up to is what we can change, we cannot change what is up to them. JA! Got that? The point is, that there is no reason why to compare yourself to someone else, because their things are theirs because they pay for them, you haven’t. When suffering comes knocking on your door is because that is the way it is supposed to be, and it hasn’t knocked on others door because it might knock later for something else, “If they are bad, do not be angry that you did not get them.” (Section 25)