Plain
Epictetus — The Slave

So what if I have to go to court? What if someone else gets sick, or sails the ocean, or dies, or gets convicted? Yes, these things must happen. In a universe this big, with so many people living together, bad things will happen to some people and not others. Your job is to come here and say what you should say. Handle these situations properly. Then someone says, "I'm going to accuse you of wronging me." Good luck with that. I've done my part. Whether you've done yours — that's for you to figure out. There's a real risk you might not even notice if you're failing.

Discourses, How Magnanimity is Consistent with Care 109 of 388
Facing Hardship Doing The Right Thing
Epictetus — The Slave Original

What then must I be brought to trial; must another have a fever, another sail on the sea, another die, and another be condemned? Yes, for it is impossible in such a universe of things, among so many living together, that such things should not happen, some to one and others to others. It is your duty then since you are come here, to say what you ought, to arrange these things as it is fit. Then some one says, "I shall charge you with doing me wrong." Much good may it do you: I have done my part; but whether you also have done yours, you must look to that; for there is some danger of this too, that it may escape your notice.

Discourses, How Magnanimity is Consistent with Care 109 of 388
Epictetus — The Slave

But if you see yourself as a human being and part of a larger whole, then sometimes that whole needs you to get sick. Sometimes it needs you to travel and face danger. Sometimes it needs you to go without. And sometimes it needs you to die young. So why does this upset you? Don't you realize that just like a foot is no longer a foot when cut off from the body, you're no longer human when separated from other humans? What is a human being anyway? You're part of a community. First, the universal community of gods and humans. Then the smaller community right around you — which is just a tiny version of that universal one.

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Human Nature Facing Hardship What Matters Most
Epictetus — The Slave Original

But if you consider yourself as a man and a part of a certain whole, it is for the sake of that whole that at one time you should be sick, at another time take a voyage and run into danger, and at another time be in want, and in some cases die prematurely. Why then are you troubled? Do you not know, that as a foot is no longer a foot if it is detached from the body, so you are no longer a man if you are separated from other men. For what is a man? A part of a state, of that first which consists of gods and of men; then of that which is called next to it, which is a small image of the universal state.

Discourses, How Magnanimity is Consistent with Care 108 of 388
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Ancient philosophy, in plain English.

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