Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Do not seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”
Epictetus · Stoicism · Ancient · c. 108 CE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that wanting events to match your preference is a way of being defeated, while wanting to meet what happens is a wish that can succeed. A competing reading hears passivity, as if he were forbidding plans, whereas the chapter is about desire, not about refusing to act where action is up to you. It is Enchiridion 8, in the same cluster as the opening distinction. A Stoic can still call an action vicious, and still refuse to be shattered by the fact that it occurred.
Did Epictetus really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Standard translation of Handbook 8. It is easy to over-read as passivity. In context it is about desire, not about refusing to act.
Where it comes from
Enchiridion 8
Approximate date: c. 108 CE.
How to use it
Keep the plan for the parents' evening, and drop the extra demand that you were owed a day in which the bus, the baby, and the head teacher all cooperated. The plan is still yours to attempt. The demand that reality should already have matched it is the part that fails on his terms.
A mindset reading
Acceptance here is of facts, not of injustice redescribed as fine. The habit is to act where you can, and not to add a second suffering by insisting the past should have been otherwise. Those are different operations, and only one of them is available.
Understand the philosophy
He is answering the disappointment that comes from a wish aimed at what is not yours. 'Wish', in this exercise, is the direction of desire, which Stoics train as carefully as they train action. All will be well, he says, when desire agrees with what happens. That is not a forecast that external plans will succeed.
- resilience
- change
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that wanting events to match your preference is a way of being defeated, while wanting to meet what happens is a wish that can succeed. A competing reading hears passivity, as if he were forbidding plans, whereas the chapter is about desire, not about refusing to act where action is up to you. It is Enchiridion 8, in the same cluster as the opening distinction. A Stoic can still call an action vicious, and still refuse to be shattered by the fact that it occurred.
Did Epictetus really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Standard translation of Handbook 8. It is easy to over-read as passivity. In context it is about desire, not about refusing to act.
Which work is it in?
Enchiridion 8 Approximate date: c. 108 CE.