** Guests at the Banquet of Life ** I always think there is more to the art of living than there is. Less a book than a lecture, an exhortation to use what I’ll call Epictetus’ razor as a means for approaching life: If it is under your control, focus on it, find effort and struggle, even if it means transient unpleasantness. If it is not within your control, don’t just accept it. Find ways to incorporate it as part of the plan of the universe. What struck me in this read-through is the exhortation to both let go of the past, and view life as a wondrous thing, as if we are all already on the downhill slope.

  • Let us not place the blame on others but on our own attitudes … There is nothing to be gained on blaming others or ourselves. Things simply are what they are, people will think what they think, it is of no concern to us. * According to Epictitus, even evil hardly exists: * Evil does not naturally dwell in the world or in people. It is a byproduct of forgetfulness, laziness, or distraction. * Therefore the universe we live in, is the best of all possible universes, and our lives are simply our experience of being a guest at a banquet.

** 20th book of 2025 **

** 86th book of 2020: Antiquity’s Self Help **

“No man is free who is not a master of himself.”

Epictetus, born a slave, has the brevity of a teacher and enough insight to make a short trip into stoicism worthwhile. Most, if not all lessons could fit easily into a modern buddhist or psychological self help book, but the density of statements and pithy maxims, and authors own lived experience make it more compelling.

A few thoughts I take away: * “you become what you give your attention to” * with admonitions against becoming one of the mob and spending attention on base entertainment and social prattle. Just the sort of catnip for your bookish reviewer, but interesting to me that the vices of attention and spectacle afflicted the leisure class of Rome just as it does every class of the modern western world.

In a statement aligned with Buddhism: * “It’s not the things that happen to us that make us suffer. It’s what we tell ourselves about those things.” * In fact we should be thinking, ‘how are my thoughts affecting those around me’ rather than the other way around.

Finally, ‘* No man is free who is not master of himself *’ comments on the lens of perception as being the overriding factor in happiness. Of course mixed in with statements that justify consideration and thought, there are a bundle of social prescriptions about how to interact, how to eat, etc. that seem less compelling. Still enough wheat to justify the chaff.