Book review: “Discourses of Epicteus”
This book was mentioned by a sucessful investor Charlie Munger. His son has died of leukemia (blood cancer) at age od 9. You can read more details on this story of a man’s ability to never give up here. I think there were few ideas Charlie took from Epicteus to keep his mind focus in a difficult times. As Charlie mentioned in one of his “life wisdom“ speeches:
Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia…Every time you find your drifting into self-pity, I don’t care what the cause, your child could be dying from cancer, self-pity is not going to improve the situation. It’s a ridiculous way to behave.
Life will have terrible blows, horrible blows, unfair blows, it doesn’t matter. Some people recover and others don’t. There I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something and that your duty was not to be immersed in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.
And few ideas from “Discourses of Epicteus” that resonated with me deply:
- If someone tells you that so-and-so speaks ill of you, do not defend yourself against what he says, but answer - he did not know my other falses or he would not have mentioned these alone.
- Never say of anything I’ve lost it, but say I gave it back. Has your child died? He was given back. Has your wife died? She was given back. Has your estate been taken from you? Was not this also given back? But you say: he, who took it from me is wicked, what does it matter to you through whom the giver asked it back as long as he gives it to you. Take care of it, but not as your own. Treat it as pastors by treatment in.
Audiobook is freely availbale on YouTube:
And if you prefer a physical hard copy of the book for your personal library collection - buy on Amazon: link
