The Handbook and The First Rule

It's simple, really: some things are in our power and some things are not. This is the first rule to, well, anything. Everything. What better way to begin The Handbook?

THE HANDBOOK 

A manual is something done with the hands but it also describes to a book of instruction, a reference tool kept close-at-hand, as it were. Handbooks help us understand, perhaps even fix or make adjustments. This is the meaning of "Enchiridion," a Greek word serving as the title a short work by Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher who was born roughly 50 years after Jesus. The work is easily accessible wisdom. Freely download a copy at The Internet Classic Archive or from the Project Gutenberg site. Some apps are available for your phone under various names, but search "Stoic" or "Stoicism" and find the text in various and portable (even audio) forms.

My desire is to dedicate a number of blog posts to The Enchiridion. The entries are much like fortune cookies, only more robust and chunky. Still easy to digest, the lessons contained therein should make one slow down and think differently about some things--perhaps for the very first time.

THE FIRST RULE

The first chapter of The Enchiridion consists of three paragraphs developing the root idea found in the very first sentence: "There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power." This profound, yet simple beginning opens the door to freedom that comes from seeing things as they are. A simple truth that relieves so much self-inflicted pressure. Some things you control and some things are out of your control. Similarly, some things are yours and some things are not. We hinder ourselves, hold ourselves back, pile on grief when we take what belongs to others for ourselves when in reality, nothing is really ours. More on this in a later post. 

In short, we must examine an idea when it comes, a thought, an impression, asking: is this in my power or control or not, for, "if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you."

What is not in our control? To begin with, we can't control the fine workings of our body. Our heartbeat, circulatory, endocrine and digestive systems require no conscious effort on our part. We have no control over those. Additionally, we have no power over other persons, property, how others think of us, the ability to make anything come to us (as it were)--"and in one word, whatever are not our own actions."

What do we control? What is within our power? Opinion, the ability to pursue and avoid, "and, in a word, whatever are our own actions."

IN CONCLUSION:

"We could look at the upcoming day and despair at all the things we don't control: other people, our health, the temperature, the outcome of a project once it leaves our hands. Or we could look out at that very same day and rejoice at the one thing we do control: the ability to decide what any event means.

This second option offers the ultimate power--a true and fair form of control. If you had control over other people, wouldn't other people have control over you? Instead, what you've been granted is the fairest . . . . While you don't control external events, you retain the ability to decide how you respond to those events. You control what every external even means to you personally. This includes the difficult one in front of you right now." (Holiday, Ryan. The Daily Stoic. p. 290)