pain · you feel you may never gain a thing · relationships · wife
what you just named
You came in pain, not joy: that you feel you may never gain a thing, in your relationships — specifically with wife — and you reached for the Stoic voice first. That's what you've named. Listen now to what it answers.
- Stoic
Spirit
mind
The fear that you will never become the husband she deserves has the structure of all fears about future becoming — it imagines arrival as the only worthwhile state. Epictetus does not let his student wait on arrival. Immediately then think it right to live as a full-grown man, and one who is making proficiency, and let everything which appears to you to be the best be to you a law which must not be transgressed. The instruction is now. Pick what appears to you to be the best husband-act available today, and make it a law you do not transgress. You may never arrive at being the husband she deserves. You can be the husband making proficiency today. Making proficiency is the only honest answer to a calling you have not yet fulfilled.
heart
Pick one husband-act that appears best today. Make it a law you do not transgress. Today. Tomorrow.
connection
You stand in the line of all husbands who could not promise arrival but committed to proficiency — every man who made one small daily law for himself in his marriage and kept it through years of imperfect becoming.
Action
Today, write down one rule of conduct toward her that you will not transgress this month. Make it small enough to be unmissable. Keep it.
Reference
Immediately then think it right to live as a full-grown man, and one who is making proficiency, and let everything which appears to you to be the best be to you a law which must not be transgressed.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 50
practice
One small daily law in your marriage, kept untransgressed
principle
Becoming the husband she deserves is proficiency, not arrival
value
Daily proficiency over future arrival