“Anything that can be prevented, taken away, or coerced is not a person’s own — but those things that can’t be blocked are their own.”
EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.24.3
In today’s page in The Daily Stoic, we are reminded that we don’t really own much at all. Almost everything that we’ve worked so hard to obtain, all those physical items that we collect and save and treasure — they’re all at the whim of fate. A fire could burn them up, a thief could steal them, a lawsuit could take them away.
Our careers, our relationships, our homes. The pets that we love, the places that we treasure, the daily routines that we follow. We don’t truly own any of them. They could be ripped away from us at a moment’s notice by disaster or unforeseen misfortune, and there’s nothing we can do about that. It’s best to ‘let go’ in advance, because attachment holds us back.
Well then, what do we really own? We own our lives, at least for this short time that we’re on Earth. And we own our reasoned choice, which makes us invincible. With this in mind, we should live each day as if it were our last, using that reasoned choice to make each moment count.
