Today's passage

Enchiridion 14

If you wish your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you are foolish, for you wish things to be in your power which are not so, and what belongs to others to be your own. So likewise, if you wish your servant to be without fault, you are foolish, for you wish vice not to be vice but something else. But if you wish not to be disappointed in your desires, that is in your own power. Exercise, therefore, what is in your power. A man’s master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.

Epictetus, Enchiridion · translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Reflection

Context

The *Enchiridion* is a compact handbook of Epictetus's teaching, assembled by his student Arrian. Chapter 14 applies the book's founding distinction — between what is and isn't "up to us" — to the hardest cases: the people we love and the people who serve us.

The idea

Epictetus targets two wishes that look reasonable but are incoherent. To wish your family to live forever is to demand that "things not in your power" (τὰ μὴ ἐπὶ σοί) be in your power, and that what belongs to others (τὰ ἀλλότρια) be yours. To wish your servant never to err is to wish "that vice not be vice" (τὴν κακίαν μὴ εἶναι κακίαν) — you're asking the nature of a flawed being to be different than it is. What *is* achievable: not being frustrated in your desires (ὄρεξις), because you can steer desire only toward what you control. The sting is the definition of a master (κύριος): whoever controls what you crave or dread owns you. Wish for nothing external, and no one holds that leverage.

In practice

This isn't a case for not loving people — it's a case against loving them on impossible terms. Notice where your peace is hostage to someone else's choices or lifespan. Try shifting the object of desire: not "may my child never suffer," but "may I meet whatever comes as a good parent." When a colleague's flaw irritates you, ask whether you're demanding they not be flawed. Aim your effort at your own response, the one lever that answers to you.