Epictetus: Freedom Within Circumstance

53.3-3.5 Framing Series, Set 3 of 3 (Ancient Philosophers): Essay 5

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Related: Introduction to the Foundation Series · Introduction to the Load-Bearing Series · Introduction to the Framing Series · Framing Series, Set 1 (Parables) · Framing Series, Set 2 (Thinkers) · Framing Series, Set 3 (Philosophers) · Essay 1 (Philosophers, Socrates) · Essay 2 (Philosophers, Plato) · Essay 3 (Philosophers, Aristotle) · Essay 4 (Philosophers, Heraclitus)

Welcome

There are remarkably few things in life that truly belong to me in the way I sometimes imagine. In my Load-Bearing Series Introduction, I explored this idea through what I called the beam of stewardship, but the principle reaches far beyond that framework. I can choose how carefully to prepare, how hard to work, how to treat another person, and what to do after making a mistake. I can decide whether to listen, apologize, remain curious, forgive, or walk away.

Much else exists beyond me. I cannot determine how another person interprets my words, whether careful preparation produces the outcome I hope for, or how circumstances unfold despite my best efforts. I influence my daughters, but I cannot choose who they become. I love Hanna without controlling what life places before either of us. Even my health, finances, reputation, opportunities, and future remain vulnerable to events I neither foresee nor command. Recognizing those limits has become one of the most freeing lessons I continue to learn.

One of the hardest lessons for me has been learning that faithful stewardship does not guarantee the outcomes I hope for. Influence often extends farther than responsibility, but the two are not the same. I can invest care, preparation, discipline, attention, and love without owning the outcome. I am responsible for how faithfully I carry what has been entrusted to me, not for every result that follows. The more clearly I understand that distinction, the more energy I have for the work that is actually mine to do.

That is where Epictetus meets me. He asks what remains mine when circumstances refuse to cooperate, other people make choices I would not make, and careful effort still ends in disappointment. His answer is demanding, but also liberating: what remains mine is the person I choose to be in response.

In Conversation with Epictetus

Heraclitus asked how we live within a world that never stops changing. Epictetus takes the next step. If change cannot be stopped and much of life cannot be controlled, where does human freedom reside?

Epictetus was born around AD 50 in Hierapolis, in what is now Turkey. Unlike Plato, Aristotle, and many other ancient philosophers, he began life enslaved. He was taken to Rome and became part of the household of Epaphroditus, a powerful freedman associated with the imperial court. Ancient accounts also describe Epictetus as having a lasting physical disability, although its cause remains uncertain.

Those details are important because Epictetus developed his ideas about freedom while living under conditions that denied him much of what most of us would ordinarily associate with it. His circumstances were constrained, his body may have been limited, and his social position was imposed upon him. Yet he came to believe that no external authority could completely possess a person who had learned to govern his own judgments and choices.

After gaining his freedom, Epictetus studied and taught Stoic philosophy. When Emperor Domitian expelled philosophers from Rome near the end of the first century, Epictetus relocated to Nicopolis, in northwestern Greece, where he established a school. He apparently wrote nothing himself. His teachings survive largely because his student, Arrian, recorded his lectures and conversations in works now known as the Discourses and assembled a shorter collection called the Enchiridion, or Handbook.

I find that almost as interesting as the philosophy itself. Epictetus spent his life helping others understand how to live, but another person preserved his voice. It makes me think about the people I have known who poured their energy into families, organizations, communities, and other people’s futures while recording very little of their own wisdom. My thoughts return to my mom. Much of what she taught was never written down, yet I still find myself living from lessons she quietly passed on. Some of those lessons now survive because those of us who received them continue to carry them forward.

Epictetus began the Handbook by distinguishing between what is within our power and what is not. Our judgments, choices, desires, and actions belong to us. Our bodies, reputations, possessions, status, and many outcomes do not belong to us in the same way because they remain exposed to forces beyond our command.

That distinction can sound cold until I remember who was making it. Epictetus was not writing from a life protected from hardship. He was describing the territory of freedom he first discovered within enslavement.

The Question

Epictetus asks me to separate responsibility from control.

What has actually been entrusted to my stewardship?

My first answer is that I am responsible for more than I sometimes use well. I decide whether to interrupt another person because I am eager to add my own story, whether to complain, become defensive, or allow fear to dictate my next decision. I also choose how to respond when another person behaves in a way I find frustrating. Their conduct may offer a lesson, but it does not give me permission to repeat it.

At the same time, far less is mine to govern than my plans often imply. I cannot determine whether another person approves of me, whether an opportunity materializes, whether the market rises, whether illness arrives, or whether the people I love make choices that lead toward joy or pain. I can prepare, communicate, save, teach, encourage, pray, and show up. None of those actions purchases certainty.

This is where influence becomes important. Influence respects another person’s freedom. Control attempts to replace it. Influence offers an idea, models a behavior, asks a question, or creates conditions where something better may become possible. It still accepts that the decision belongs to someone else.

Epictetus did not teach that external events were unimportant or that suffering should be ignored. He taught that allowing those events to determine our character gives them authority they do not need to possess. Acceptance is not approval, and it is not passivity. It is beginning with what is already true so that our energy can move toward the response still available.

Perhaps peace begins when responsibility replaces the illusion of control. I cannot prevent every person from hurting another, but I can refuse to become another source of harm. I cannot correct every injustice, but I can choose to treat others with fairness and dignity. The territory may be smaller than I want, yet it is still enough to occupy the rest of my life.

Where I Meet This Question

My mind first goes back to seventh grade, when our class had been asked to memorize the Gettysburg Address. When my turn came, I stood in front of my classmates and froze. I was not generally afraid of speaking in front of people, but in that moment my mind went blank, and the teacher asked me to sit down.

When there was a break that would not interrupt another student, I approached her and explained that I did not know what had happened, but I was ready and wanted to try again. She told me I had already received my opportunity and would be given an F. I cannot say that she owed me another chance, but the experience felt final in a way that learning should not. Decades later, I still know much of the Gettysburg Address by heart, which makes me wonder what the grade was actually measuring.

What came next changed far more than that grade. My mom found me a tutor named Ray, and twice each week we went to the Southdale Library, chose a subject, found resources, and worked through the process of research and writing together. He did not simply help me complete assignments. He showed me that learning could begin with curiosity rather than embarrassment.

Until reflecting on this essay, Ray had not crossed my mind in decades. As I thought about those years, I found myself searching for him, though I was unable to find him. He may never know that those afternoons helped create a lifelong love of research and contributed to nearly everything I now write. My teacher’s decision was beyond my control, but my mom and Ray helped me discover that it did not have to define the rest of my education. What first felt like a closed door led into a library.

Epictetus also takes me back to some of my earliest travels in Indonesia. While walking along railroad tracks and through communities with very little material wealth, I sometimes encountered children collecting discarded objects they could sell or reuse. A piece of metal, a bottle, or a single abandoned flip-flop might become part of a game while they searched for its match. They ran, laughed, teased one another, and found possibilities inside things most people had thrown away.

I do not want to romanticize poverty. Those children deserved safety, education, opportunity, and freedom from hardship. Their joy did not make deprivation acceptable. What I remember is that circumstance and spirit did not always move together in the way I expected. Children with very little remained capable of delight, while people surrounded by comfort sometimes seemed imprisoned by comparison, resentment, or the inability to enjoy what they already possessed.

Epictetus would not tell the child to be satisfied with injustice or tell the privileged person to feel guilty for comfort. I think he would ask each of them the same difficult question: What are you allowing your circumstances to decide about you?

I have seen another version of that question while visiting people in nursing homes. The boundaries of life can become painfully narrow as driving ends, careers conclude, and privacy or independence is reduced. Meals, medications, sleep, and movement may all become organized by other people.

Yet I have met people within those limits whose humor, gratitude, curiosity, and interest in others remained remarkably free. I have also encountered people with far more physical independence who seemed trapped by fear, bitterness, or the belief that life still owed them something. I cannot judge what any individual carries, but those encounters have made me wonder whether freedom changes long before it disappears.

Viktor Frankl reminded me of a similar truth through circumstances far more extreme than anything I have experienced. Long before I encountered Epictetus, Frankl had already shown me that even when much is taken away, something essential may still remain. Reading Epictetus later felt less like discovering a new idea than finding an older voice asking the same demanding question.

That does not mean anyone can think their way out of suffering. Pain remains pain. Oppression remains wrong. Illness, grief, trauma, and fear are not failures of attitude. What these beautiful minds offer is narrower and more demanding: even when circumstance takes away many choices, it may not take every choice.

I meet that challenge in ordinary family life as well. Movie nights have long been part of our family. Now, with three young daughters, choosing the movie can become almost as complicated as watching it. Each girl has a favorite, everyone hopes for some influence, and I quietly lobby for something with real actors instead of another cartoon.

We prepare popcorn, collect blankets, make sure everyone has something to drink, and settle in. Occasionally, disappointment over the choice turns into an argument, emotions rise, and the evening we planned has to be changed or called off.

Those moments can feel disproportionately frustrating because the adults have prepared something enjoyable and naturally hope the children will enjoy it. Epictetus reminds me that preparation guarantees nothing. I can extend the invitation, help create a warm atmosphere, and choose a steady response. Whether every child enjoys the evening is ultimately not mine to decide.

That distinction applies to almost everything I value. I can write faithfully without deciding how an essay will be received. I can coach carefully without determining what another person will do. I can invest thoughtfully without directing the market. I can love someone deeply without securing the future I hope they will have.

I still care about outcomes. Epictetus does not ask me to become indifferent to them. He asks whether I can remain fully committed without allowing my character to depend upon receiving the result I hoped for.

What I Hope My Daughters Remember

As a father, I have influence over many of the inputs in my daughters’ lives and authority over very few of the outputs. Hanna and I can create a loving home, establish expectations, model faith, encourage curiosity, provide education, and correct behavior. We can expose our daughters to people, places, books, responsibilities, and possibilities while listening carefully and trying to understand who each of them is becoming.

We cannot guarantee that they will share our values, avoid painful mistakes, choose healthy relationships, or pursue the lives we imagine for them. I am not sure I would want that power even if it were offered because a child completely controlled by a parent has not been prepared to become a free person. That does not make parenting passive. Influence may require more discipline than control because it asks me to remain present without demanding a particular result. It requires boundaries, correction, patience, and the humility to recognize that love does not give me ownership of another person’s future.

One day, each of them will discover that the world does not always reward effort fairly. Doors will close without explanation. Trust will sometimes be broken. Plans will change, opportunities will disappear, and some questions may never receive satisfying answers. My first instinct may be to protect them from disappointment, but there will be moments when the greater gift is simply remaining beside them while they discover what still belongs to them.

I hope they learn that responsibility is not the same as blame. They will never be responsible for everything that happens to them. They will, however, be responsible for what they choose to carry forward when they are ready and able to choose again.

They should also know that strength does not require pretending to be unaffected. A free person can cry, grieve, ask for help, feel afraid, and admit that something hurts. Freedom is not the absence of emotion. It is the refusal to let one painful moment write every chapter that follows.

If they learn anything from Epictetus, I hope it is this: their lives will never be entirely within their control, but their character will remain theirs to protect and shape. No disappointment, opinion, failure, or circumstance should be granted the final authority to decide who they become.

Leadership Through This Lens

Leadership becomes exhausting when influence is confused with control. Organizations depend upon people whose goals, pressures, experiences, and judgments differ. A leader can establish expectations, allocate resources, communicate priorities, reward certain behaviors, and address performance, but none of that creates complete control over how people will interpret a decision or what they will ultimately do.

I have seen this clearly in the golf industry. A major equipment or irrigation purchase decision may eventually require approval from one or two people, but many others can influence whether the decision ever reaches that point. A superintendent, technician, board member, finance leader, architect, or trusted adviser may not have the authority to say yes, yet each may have enough influence to say, Not on my watch. Focusing only on the final decision-maker can therefore become both ineffective and disrespectful.

The better approach is to understand the people within the decision, listen to their concerns, provide useful information, and treat their experience as legitimate, even when they do not possess the final signature. Influence loses its integrity when it becomes manipulation. Control attempts to force the answer. Influence builds enough understanding and trust for another person to make a decision freely. The first may occasionally create compliance. The second has a better chance of creating commitment.

Coaching makes this distinction even clearer. I cannot do another person’s thinking or choose their next step. If I become too attached to the outcome, I may begin steering the conversation toward the answer I prefer while calling it support. My responsibility is to listen, ask, challenge, and create enough safety for honest exploration. The decision remains theirs.

Leadership also asks me to learn from behaviors I do not want to repeat. A person who dominates every conversation can teach me to leave more room. Someone who complains without seeking a next step can remind me to take responsibility for the action still available. A leader who becomes defensive under challenge can show me how quickly ego reduces influence. Learning from those examples does not require condemning the person. I have interrupted people, taken conversations in directions that interested me, become defensive, and allowed my own stories to crowd out someone else’s. Recognizing those tendencies in myself has been far more useful than simply noticing them in someone else.

Epictetus’ leadership lesson is not that outcomes are irrelevant. Leaders remain accountable for results. His challenge is to direct our deepest energy toward preparation, judgment, communication, conduct, and the quality of our response rather than exhausting ourselves through the fantasy that every person and outcome can be controlled. The strongest leaders I know do not appear free because circumstances always cooperate with them. They are free because setbacks, criticism, and uncertainty do not repeatedly turn them into someone they do not want to be.

Reflection Point

Freedom begins where responsibility replaces the illusion of control.

The Invitation: Choose Your Response

• Identify one situation that is consuming your energy but lies outside your control.
• Focus on the next response that remains available to you.
• Notice where influence may accomplish more than control.
• Replace one complaint with one constructive action.
• Allow someone you love the freedom to make a choice you cannot make for them.
• Protect your character more carefully than your circumstances.

Two Questions to Explore

1. What am I trying to control that was never truly mine?
2. How would my life change if I focused more on my response than my circumstances?

Further Resources

• Epictetus, Discourses. The most complete record of Epictetus’ teachings, preserved by his student Arrian through lectures and conversations.
• Epictetus, Enchiridion (The Handbook). A concise guide to Stoic living built around the distinction between what we control and what we do not.
• William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life. A practical introduction to Stoic philosophy and its application to modern life.
• Donald Robertson, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. An exploration of Stoicism, psychology, and resilience through the life of Marcus Aurelius.
• Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. A powerful reflection on freedom, suffering, responsibility, and the enduring ability to choose one’s response.

The distinction between responsibility and control has slowly changed the way I think about peace. Peace no longer seems to come from arranging life exactly the way I hope it will unfold. I have watched people face cancer, financial hardship, broken relationships, career setbacks, and losses they never would have chosen. Those experiences were not made fair or necessary simply because something could later be learned from them. Yet I have also seen people emerge with a different understanding of themselves, their priorities, and what they still had available to give.

My thoughts return to my mentor Don. He has encountered obstacles that would have given many people permission to become bitter or cynical. Instead, he continues looking for what can still be done, who can still be encouraged, and where hope can still be found. That does not mean every outcome has been favorable. It means he has refused to let circumstance become the final author of his character. Through people like Don, Epictetus reminds me that freedom is not measured by how much control we possess. It is revealed by what remains when much of that control disappears.

Epictetus brings me back to the limits of my own control and leaves me with a question I suspect I will spend the rest of my life answering:

Who will I choose to become when life refuses to unfold the way I hoped?

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Next week, we continue with Seneca.

We choose who we become.

Live. Lead. Love.
Billy

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