The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [12]
11. The question to be asked at the end of each day is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?’
Chapter 11
1. Do not demand that things should happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
2. Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to your ability to choose, unless that is your choice. Lameness is a hindrance to the leg, but not to your ability to choose.
3. Say this to yourself with regard to everything that happens, then you will see such obstacles as hindrances to something else, but not to yourself.
4. With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for making a proper use of it.
5. If you see an attractive person, you will find that self-restraint is the ability you have against your desire.
6. If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances of things will not hurry you away along with them.
7. Never say of anything, ‘I have lost it’; but, ‘I have returned it’. For things come, even when we labour for them, as if it were a gift; and in the end all things are returned.
8. Be content to be thought unconventional with regard to external things.
9. Do not wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself.
10. If you do not wish your desires to be frustrated, this is in your own control. Exercise, therefore, what is in your control.
11. He is the master of every other person who is able to confer or remove whatever that person wishes either to have or to avoid.
12. Whoever, then, would be free, let him not wish too earnestly for anything that depends on others.
13. Behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought around to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation.
14. Does it pass by you? Do not stop it.
15. Is it not yet come? Do not stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you.
16. Do this with regard to children, to a spouse, to public posts, to riches, and you will eventually be a worthy guest at the feast of life.
17. And if you do not even take all the things that are set before you, but are able willingly to reject them, then you will not only be a partner at the feasts of life, but one of its princes.
18. The question to be asked at the end of each day is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?’
Chapter 12
1. When you see anyone weeping in grief because his loved one has gone abroad, or is dead, or because he has suffered in his affairs, be careful that the appearance may not misdirect you.
2. Instead, distinguish within your own mind, and be prepared to say, ‘It’s not the accident that distresses this person, because it does not distress another person; it is the judgement he makes about it.’
3. It is our attitudes to things that give them their value, whether good or bad, or indifferent. Strengthen your mind to right attitudes, and you will live with fortitude and just measure.
4. You are an actor in a drama, of which the author is jointly you and matters beyond your control.
5. Thus say to yourself, ‘Whatever happens, it is in my control to derive advantage from it, even if only to learn how to bear misfortune.’
6. You will be unconquerable, if you enter only into combat you can win.
7. When, therefore, you see anyone eminent in honours, or power, or in high esteem on any other account, take heed not to be hurried away with the appearance, and to pronounce him happy;
8. For, if the essence of good consists in our own choices, there will be no room for envy or emulation.
9. But, for your part, do not wish to be a general, or a senator, or a consul, but rather: wish to be free;
10. And the only way to be completely free is the right attitude to things not in your own control.
11. Remember that insult does not come from the one who gives ill language or a blow, but from the principle which represents these things as insulting.
12.