The Art of Living

Yesterday, I received a book in the mail from a friend, Epictetus' "The Art of Living." She saw that I had mentioned him a previous blog post and thought I might like the book.

I do. It's great. Subtitled "The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness," it purports to be a "new interpretation," which means it has basically been paraphrased, rendered into the parlance of our times. Normally, I'm not too into paraphrasing philosophy, for certain more subtle elements tend to get distorted, but Epictetus was one of those Greeks that never wrote anything himself anyway. Students wrote down what he supposedly said, so it was all paraphrase anyway....It was a popular book in its day. (Soldiers carried it into battle, presumably to help them cope. What an idea - arm yourself with ideas before going into battle.)

Here's a tidbit, from the mini-chapter (the whole book is little easy-to-read chunks) titled: Act Well the Part that Is Given to You.

We are like actors in a play. The divine will has assigned us our roles in life without consulting us. Some of us will act in a short drama, others in a long one. We might be assigned the part of a poor person, a cripple, a distinguished celebrity or public leader, or an ordinary private citizen.

Although we can't control which roles are assigned to us, it must be our business to act our given role as best we possibly can and to refrain from complaining about it. Whenever you find yourself and in whatever circumstances, give an impeccable performance.

This is the sort of stuff I figured out a long time ago - on my own, I feel, although since I read voraciously, who knows who really contributed to the ideas. Except I don't agree that we have no control over our part. I think we volunteered. I think there was definitely some element of choice that went into the part we now play. But I'm not bend on proving that really....The part I really like is this idea of giving an impeccable performance. Isn't that a lovely phrase? I just want to toss it out there, just remind myself and anyone reading about this possibility.

And this from a guy who was born a slave.