August 08, 2026

What Is Not Yours

If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends to live for ever, you are stupid; for you wish things to be in your power which are not so, and what belongs to others to be your own.

Epictetus taught in Nicopolis after years as a slave in Rome, and his students were often anxious men clinging to status, health, and the safety of those they loved. This line follows directly from his famous teaching that some things are up to us and some are not, and here he applies it to our most tender attachments. To wish that a spouse, child, or friend live forever, he says, is to demand power over something that was never ours to command. The Stoic discipline of the dichotomy of control asks us to sort every desire this way each morning: is this a judgment or choice of mine, or is it an outcome that belongs to fate, to nature, to other people? Practicing this does not mean loving less, it means placing our peace only in what we can actually direct.

A principle of Stoicism: The Dichotomy of Control →