May my thoughts, my writing, and my reading be along these lines

Now you want me to leave the festival, and I do so full of gratitude for the fact that you found me worthy to share the celebration with you, see your works, and understand your governance.’ May my thoughts, my writing, and my reading be along these lines when death overtakes me!

Talking about self-sufficiency, eh? On the need of proving oneself

 Compared to Aurelius there is something stinky and untasteful in unpoetic Epictetus. I’m waiting for the moment of abandoning it.

As for the quote, one remembers freedom-lover Sancho, who doesn’t need to prove himself.

And if someone comes up to you and says, ‘We were talking about who was the best philosopher, and one of our group said that the only true philosopher was you’ your soul expands a hundredfold. But if another member of the group said about you, ‘What nonsense! There’s no point in listening to him. What does he know? He’s got the basics, but nothing more than that,’ it drives you crazy. You turn pale and blurt out, ‘I’ll show him who I am! I’ll show him I’m a great philosopher!’ But that’s exactly the kind of behavior that shows what a man is, so why try to prove yourself in any other way? Don’t you remember how Diogenes identified a certain sophist like that, by pointing at him with his middle finger, and then, when the man had a fit, Diogenes said, ‘That’s the fellow. I’ve shown him to you.’ 

Proust and Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and me

 How often we sacrifice the fulfilment of a possible happiness to our impatience for an immediate pleasure!

Que de bonheurs possibles dont on sacrifie ainsi la réalisation à l’impatience d’un plaisir immédiat ! 

რამდენჯერ ყოფილა, რომ შესაძლო ბედნიერება მყისიერი სიამოვნებისათვის შეგვიწირავს ჩვენივე სულმოკლეობით!

Technically Proust is right. But he knew and Nietzsche knew and maybe even Dostoevsky that one cannot calculate, that structurally human being is an entity of plethora of undercurrents and underground impulses. If you swim against them they will bring havoc on you and if you do you might end up in unknown lands which are surrounded by still more powerful currents and blown upon by still more powerful storms. You must be stronger than yourself and stronger than others (dwelling in you). 

Epictetus on travelling

 ‘When shall I see Athens again and the Acropolis?’ You poor thing, aren’t you content with what you see every day? Is there anything better or greater for you to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the sea? If you understand the governor of the universe and carry him around with you, why do you still long for blocks of stone and a prettified rock?

I would add that wherever we go we find ourselves. Proust says that true journey would be to have new eyes.

Epictetus on illusions

 After all, what difference does it make what it is that a person is subject to and dependent on? If you mourn the loss of a gymnasium or some such haunt, with its shady colonnades and youthful companions, are you any better than a man who sheds tears over a girlfriend? Someone else is upset because he won’t in the future be drinking water from Dirce’s Spring—but is the water of the Marcian aqueduct worse than Dirce’s?

Epictetus on imagination

 

And then, because of our lack of training, we’re constantly compounding our problems and making them out to be greater than they really are. For instance, when I’m on board a ship, I peer down into the depths, or I look at the sea all around me, with no land in sight, and I become unsettled and imagine myself swallowing all that water if the ship goes down. It doesn’t occur to me that three pints is all it takes. What is it that’s disturbing me? The sea? No, my judgment.

Epictetus and Schopenhauer

 “Our situation is like what you find at a festival. Cattle and oxen are driven there to be sold, and while most people are there to buy or sell, there are a few who go as spectators, to see how the festival is conducted and why [...] But there area few who attend the festival as people who just love to observe. ‘What in fact is the world? Who is directing it? No one? [...] What sort of a being is this director? How does he direct it? And we who are his creatures—who are we and for what purpose did he create us? Do we have some connection and relationship with our creator or not?’

But you are not a philosopher.