joy · you feel you may gain a thing · relationships · self
what you just named
You came in joy, not pain: that you feel you may gain a thing, in your relationships — specifically with self — and you reached for the Stoic voice first. That's what you've named. Listen now to what it answers.
- Stoic
Spirit
mind
The voice that was never yours is on the list of things contrary to nature — your nature, the nature that was there before the voice was installed. Epictetus tells the student that if you attempt to avoid only the things contrary to nature which are within your power you will not be involved in any of the things which you would avoid. The voice is within your power because it lives inside you. The coming-out-from-under is the practice of avoiding agreement with it, not the dramatic moment of finally being free of it. Free is the wrong frame. Daily avoidance of agreement, with what is contrary to your nature, is the actual work.
heart
Freedom from the voice is not the moment. The avoidance, today, of agreeing with it is the work.
connection
You stand in the line of all who realized the voice was within their power because it lived in them — the man who learned to not finish his father's old sentences in his own head, every man who stopped agreeing with the part of himself that was never him.
Action
Today, when the voice speaks something contrary to your actual nature, do not argue. Just do not agree. Let the sentence pass without you signing it.
Reference
If then you attempt to avoid only the things contrary to nature which are within your power you will not be involved in any of the things which you would avoid.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 2
practice
Refusing agreement with what is contrary to your nature, daily
principle
Coming out from under is not a moment; it is the daily non-signature
value
The voice loses force when you stop adding yours to it