pain · you feel you may never gain a thing · relationships · self
what you just named
You came in pain, not joy: that you feel you may never 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 in your head that sounds like every man who failed you is not your voice. It was installed by those men, and it has been running in their absence, doing their work for them, for years. Epictetus puts the cleanest knife to this: it is not he who reviles you who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting. The voice can keep speaking; you do not have to keep agreeing. The inheritance is the words. The agreement is the opinion. The first time you notice the voice and refuse to agree, you have started to inherit yourself instead of them.
heart
The voice can keep talking. You can stop agreeing with it. That is the whole work today.
connection
You stand in the line of all who realized the voice was not theirs and stopped letting it be — every son who came to know his father's voice as his father's, not his own, every man who heard the old refrain and did not sing along this time.
Action
Today, when the voice speaks the familiar line, say back to it, out loud or under your breath: 'that is his voice, not mine.' Once is enough.
Reference
Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 20
practice
Naming the inherited voice as inherited
principle
The voice may keep speaking; the agreement is what makes it yours
value
Refusing to agree with what was never yours