“He was sent to prison. But the observation ‘he has suffered evil,’ is an addition coming from you.”
EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.8.5b-6a
Sometimes events will happen to us which are commonly thought of as ‘bad’. But really they’re just events — they’re not good or bad. They don’t have any intrinsic value to them, they ‘just are’. A storm isn’t good or bad by nature; it’s just a storm.
Events only gain a negative or positive connotation because we ascribe it to them. We choose how we want to think of the event, what light to paint it in. We assign it that value.
And this means we have a choice of how we want perceive these events. Even those events which are generally considered ‘bad’, that’s really just one of the options. We decide how we want to react to it, and what we make of it. We have the option to view it in a positive light, as difficult as that may seem in the moment.
In The Daily Stoic today, the author uses the example of Malcolm X as somebody who made that difficult choice. Sent to prison for years, he didn’t view it solely a terrible thing, and instead took advantage of the situation to come out a stronger and better man.
In a chapter from earlier in the book, we learn how Nelson Mandela set the terms of his own imprisonment, and set aside the situation to focus on what he could control. He, too, emerged a more powerful individual than ever.
So now the question turns to you. You don’t have to be the next Malcolm X or Nelson Mandela, of course. You only have to be yourself — and that’s hard enough! But you do have the ability to choose your own adventure. How will you choose? How will you perceive the next difficult event that comes your way?
