...we see that people who are running after power suffer greatly. We suffer first in the chase, because so many people are struggling for the same thing. We believe that the power we are searching for is scarce and elusive and available only at the expense of someone else. But even if we achieve power, we never feel powerful enough.
Nor, if they harm you more than they benefit the person who you have promised, is it contrary to good to prefer the greater good to the lesser. For example, if you had made an appointment to appear for someone as advocate in the near future, and in the meantime your son had fallen seriously ill, it would not be contrary to your duty not to do as you had said. Rather, the person to whom you had made the promise would be failing in his duty if he complained that he had been abandoned. Again, who does not see that if someone is forced to make a promise through fear, or deceived into it by trickery, the promise ought not stand?Cicero is suggesting that the unethical behavior of others may relieve us of the obligation to fulfill out commitments. Where does this sort of reasoning end?
Nothing can free us from these mental waverings so effectively as always to establish some limit to advancement and not leave to Fortune the decision of when it shall end, but halt of our own accord.Foucault, The Care of the Self, p. 93:
And to Lucilius, who is not under any threat, however, Seneca gives the advice to disengage himself from his duties, gradually and at the right time, just as Epicurus counseled, so as to be able to place himself at his own disposal.
A mistrust of the pleasures, an emphasis on the consequences of their abuse for the body and the soul, a valorization of marriage and marital obligations, a disaffection with regard to the spiritual meanings imputed to the love of boys: a whole attitude of severity was manifested in the thinking of philosophers and physicians in the course of the first two centuries.
The mark and attitude of the ordinary man: never look for help or harm from yourself, only from outsiders. The mark and attitude of the philosopher: look for help and harm exclusively from yourself.
And the signs of a person making progress: he never criticizes, praises, blames or points the finger, or represents himself as knowing or amounting to anything. If he experiences frustration or disappointment, he points the finger at himself. If he is praised, he is more amused than elated. And if he is criticized, he won't bother to respond. He walks around as if he were an invalid, careful not to move a healing limb before it's at full strength. He has expunged all desire, and made the things that are contrary to nature and in his control the sole target of his aversion. Impulse he only uses with detachment. He does not care if he comes across as stupid or naive. In a word, he keeps an eye on himself as if he were his own enemy lying in ambush.
If you undertake a role beyond your means, you will not only embarrass yourself in that, you miss the chance of a role that you might have filled successfully.
...if you do not engage in the same acts as others with a view to gaining such honors, you cannot expect the same results. A person who will not stoop to flattery does not get to have the flatterer's advantages...refuse to praise someone and you cannot expect the same compensation as a flatterer. It would be unfair and greedy on your part, then, to decline to pay the price that these privileges entail and hope to get them for free.
Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day - especially death - and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess.
Direct aversion only towards things that are under your control and alien to your nature, and you will not fall victim to any of the things that you dislike...as for desire, suspend it completely for now...restrict yourself to choice and refusal, and exercise them carefully with discipline and detachment.Epictetus, Enchiridion, Chapter 8:
Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.
