"This Is What Happens When the Soul Has Had Enough"

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The Silent Grace,

"This Is What Happens When the Soul Has Had Enough"

“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse. For what tyrant, or what thief, or what law-courts, can still inspire fear in those who no longer attach any importance to the body and its possessions? So wait, and don’t make your departure without proper reason.

But if you want to safeguard what is external too, your poor body, your petty possessions, any slight reputation that you have, I can only say to you, begin to make every possible preparation from this time onward, and study the character, furthermore, of your judge and your opponent in the case. If you need to clasp his knees, clasp them, or to weep, then weep, or to groan, then groan. For as soon as you subordinate what is truly your own to external things, you must be a slave ever after.

Tell the truth, you wretch, and instead of bragging as you do, don’t claim to be a philosopher, and don’t fail to recognize who your masters are, but as long as you let them have this hold on you through your body, place yourself at the beck and call of everyone who is stronger than you.

Our body is thus not our own, every part of it is not our own, and our property is not our own. So if you become attached to any of these as though it were your own, you’ll suffer the punishment that a person deserves if he sets his aim on what is not his own."

- Epictetus