Illustration: Anne Geßner
According to the stoic conception, the human being is capable, not only of recognizing the divine world order through reason, but also aligning their actions to it. For stoics, it is good to live in conformity with destiny or nature, through which the world order can be seen. Therefore, the wise man must learn to control his emotions in a detached way, in order to face the inevitability of his destiny like illness and death. This approach has been used until today as a relevant moral ideal through many Western ethical theories and studies.
There are things in our power and others which we can not control. In our power are things like opinions, instincts and aversion, simply put: everything which is our own work. On the contrary, there are things beyond our power like our body, possesions, prestige and social position, basically: everything which is not our own work. What is in our authority to control, can be prevented by nature. Contrarily, what is not in our authority to control, is predetermined and alien.
Keep these words in mind: When you take alien and unfree things by nature as free and familiar things, you will suffer from grief, self-restraint and anxiety. And because of that, you will be unhappy with God and other people. But if you see your own work as your creation, and alien things as something strange and unnatural, nobody will never stop and force you to do things you don't want to do. You won't be unhappy with anyone, work against your will, harm yourself or have an enemy. You will see how nothing will cause you harm.
When you desire anything, which is not in your power, you must necessarily be unhappy. Because it is up to you to play your assigned role properly; choosing it is up to someone else. It is not the facts themselves that worry people, but their opinions about them. Therefore death is nothing terrible; because otherwise it would have appeared so to Socrates; but the opinion that death is terrible is in fact the only terrible thing. If we now experience anxiety, fear and worry, we never want to blame anyone else but ourselves, i.e. our opinions. The uneducated can be recognized by the fact that he reproaches others when he is in a bad mood, the philosophical beginner by the fact that he reproaches himself. The truly educated man does not reproach others or himself.
Epiktet: Handbüchlein der Ethik. Eingel. u. übers. v. Ernst Neitzke. Reclam: Sttugart 1980, S. 17 f., 39, 21, 25 f.,19 f.