Know Myself

Before I started writing this blog, I was having extreme writer’s block. I opened up to the Epictetus chapter in “The Good Life” to get some ideas. That’s when I realized that Epictetus’ philosophy was on point. He states: Do not seek events to happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. Basically, don’t sweat the things that you can’t control. We are all selfish. We are all impatient. We want things to go our way, and when they don’t we can get upset over it. We are hurting ourselves by doing that. This is our life, and it’s not going to last forever. Every day we are faced with things we cannot control, the only thing we can control is our judgement about the unexpected plot twists we encounter. We can either let it annoy, frustrate, and hurt us. Or we can let it help us. Whether that be a challenge that can teach us endurance, or an end to something that can take us somewhere else. But that is not the only point I want to discuss. Epictetus stated something that I can’t let go of, which was basically if you are doing something, but not in the right way, avoid it. But if you’re doing something right, why do we fear the criticism of others? This is our life, we do things for ourselves. We all have a goal that we aim for, so why are we so scared of what others think? It’s not their decision, it’s not about them. Whatever you do is for yourself, to make yourself satisfied by completing whatever you’re going for. We should stop criticizing ourselves and others. We need to respect other’s decisions. After all, if we do things only for others and what they will think, how far will that get you?