How to Handle Loss
Epictetus

• "If you kiss your child or your wife, say that you are kissing a human being. Then if they die you will not be upset." (P 525a)
• "Never say about anything that you have `lost it,' but that you have `given it back.' Your child has died? It has been given back. Your wife has died? She has been given back." (P 525b)
• "A little oil has been spilled, a little wine has been swiped: say to yourself, `This is the price of peace, that of serenity.'" (P 525b)
• "[W]hen it is your [cup] that gets broken, you ought to behave the same way you did when it was someone else's. Apply this to more important matters as well." (P 527b)

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Richard Lee, rlee@comp.uark.edu, last modified: 26 April 1999