Acting With Patience

In the second ten sections of the Handbook of Epictetus, we are shown how to confront destiny in a patient fashion, not showing necessity through our actions. According to Epictetus, you should “not stretch your desire toward it, but wait until it comes to you” (15). He compares destiny to your behavior in a banquet, where you wait until they offer you something to eat, you don’t stretch your body to get food. There is an obligation to wait and not to act, a predestination requisite, to understand that the universe’s energy will flow and eventually reach you with its intended and unique might. Through his descriptions on how to act, the reader is assured that there is a partial free will, the decision making of a soul’s opinions and desires. These are the two complementary pieces to the Handbook of Epictetus, as I mentioned in my previous post Death Is Destiny.

The handbook shows that a person depends too much on his/her judgments or beliefs in order to act. It concludes that it is a human necessity to do so as it states that when someone “irritates you be aware that what irritates you is your own belief” (16). We are often told that there is always something positive in everything and everybody. Epictetus has another way to narrate another take on this belief, by pointing out the tendency of most people to find mostly mistakes in others and place more emphasis on these.
This may imply that there needs to be awareness training for humans, to learn to use their minds consciously towards uplifting thoughts than wasting their energy on promoting and empowering the draining negative.

Epictetus continues his narration on predestination, in which you are “an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be” (16). There is an obligation to concentrate in playing your part the best way you can, changing the human’s mentality from worrying about death and events he can’t change into accepting and confronting the variety of obstacles that will come in his way and making intelligent choices. There is a tendency in Epictetus’ words to guide a lost soul back into what he considers a good path, by showing the things he can’t do in order to change what he can. What seems to be destiny in Epictetus’ writing are the set obstacles that come instead of the specific decisions and paths the living soul may take. This “playwright” isn’t described or given the appropriate importance it should have for the handbook. Will Epictetus include in his piece that religion and the belief in god/the divine playwright are necessary to a more complete understanding this sacred game of life?