Afterword: Keeping It Ready

The Handbook ends with borrowed words – a prayer, two lines of tragedy, two sentences of Socrates – because Epictetus wanted his students to leave carrying sentences rather than theories. That is the test he would set for this book as well. If it has worked, a line of it will surface on its own some ordinary morning – over a broken glass, a stalled commute, an unkind message – and underneath the line you will hear the question that organizes everything he taught: is this up to you, or is it up to someone else?

So read the chapters again, in any order, in small doses. Start with the jug before working up to exile (chapter 3, chapter 12); expect to fail at it and to begin again, which is what he meant by progress. Say the sentences to yourself in advance, before the world tests them, because in the moment of ambush you will only have what you have rehearsed. And if the Greek is new to you, let your eye drift across the facing page now and then. The sentences were built two thousand years ago by a lame ex-slave in a rented room, for exactly the day you are about to have. Keep them ready at hand.