October 16, 2026

Keep It Before Your Eyes

Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes; but chiefly death: and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

Epictetus was born a slave, crippled by a cruel master, and later banished from Rome by the emperor Domitian, before building a school in Nicopolis that trained students to meet hardship without flinching. This line comes from the Enchiridion, the handbook his student Arrian compiled from his teaching, meant as a daily exercise rather than a passing thought. He tells his students to hold death, exile, and every feared loss in view each morning, not to breed despair but to drain these things of their power to shock. The Stoics called this premeditatio malorum: picturing setbacks and losses in advance so the mind already knows their shape before they arrive. Rehearsed daily, even the gravest losses stop ambushing us, and the smaller frustrations of an ordinary day lose their sting by comparison.

A principle of Stoicism: Premeditatio Malorum →