XVI: Demand the Best for Yourself
If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endure.
The passage below is one of my favorites from Epictetus, a slave who turned into a Stoic philosophy teacher.
It’s a reality check for all of us, a reminder that,
“We carry our fate with us—and it carries us," as Marcus Aurelius would tell himself.
It’s also a chance for us to renew our vows to philosophy because we want to be great. To raise beautiful families. Have long-lasting relationships. Do impactful work — all this culminating into the happiness and satisfaction we crave deep down, Eudaemonia.
It goes like this…
“How long will you wait before you demand the best of yourself, and trust reason to determine what is best?
You have been introduced to the essential doctrines, and claim to understand them.
So what kind of teacher are you waiting for that you delay putting these principles into practice until he comes?
You're a grown man already, not a child any more.
If you remain careless and lazy, making excuse after excuse, fixing one day after another when you will finally take yourself in hand, your lack of progress will go unnoticed, and in the end you will have lived and died unenlightened.
Finally decide that you are an adult who is going to devote the rest of your life to making progress.
Abide by what seems best as if it were an inviolable law. When faced with anything painful or pleasurable, anything bringing glory or disrepute, realize that the crisis is now, that the Olympics have started, and waiting is no longer an option; that the chance for progress, to keep or lose, turns on the events of a single day.
That's how Socrates got to be the person he was, by depending on reason to meet his every challenge.
You're not yet Socrates, but you can still live as if you want to be him.
Epictetus, Enchiridion Chapter 51
It’s good to remember that we’re not practicing philosophy like a religious cult, where we follow ideologies without questioning their value in our lives. Or because we fear going to hell.