An Even Mind
This week's concept is "equanimity," a word that comes from the Latin aequanimitas, meaning literally "an even mind." It is the trained capacity to meet whatever comes, good or bad, without being thrown off balance. Not numbness, not forced positivity, but a steady inner ground that Fortune cannot reach. Over the next seven days you will learn what equanimity actually is, why the Stoics thought it was achievable through practice rather than luck, and how to start building it into the texture of your ordinary days.
Passage
“ME MISERABLE, THAT this has befallen me!” Say not so, but rather, “Fortunate that I am, because, although this has befallen me, I continue to live untroubled, being neither crushed by the present nor afraid of the future.” For something of this kind might have befallen anyone; but not everyone would have continued to live untroubled by it. Why, then, count the former aspect of the matter a misfortune, rather than this latter good fortune? And in general do you call a man’s misfortune that which is not an aberration from man’s nature? And does that seem to you to be an aberration from the nature of man which does not contravene the will of his nature? What then? This will of man’s nature you have already learned; this, then, which has befallen you does not prevent you, does it, from being just, high-minded, self-controlled, self-possessed, deliberate, free from deceit, self-respecting, free, and everything else, the possession of which enables the nature of man to come into its own? Remember for the future, whenever anything begins to trouble you, to make use of the following judgement: This thing is not a misfortune, but to bear it in a noble spirit is good fortune. ================================================== === DOUBTFUL FRAGMENTS === ==================================================
— Epictetus, Fragments 28b
Reflection
Epictetus repeats Marcus's headland logic almost word for word, but adds something important: 'this will of man's nature you have already learned.' He is pointing to prohairesis, the Greek word for your capacity to choose your own judgements and responses, the one thing that is entirely yours. Being 'just, high-minded, self-controlled, self-possessed' is not prevented by any external event. No circumstance can reach inside and take prohairesis from you unless you surrender it. Equanimity is therefore not passive resignation. It is the active, ongoing choice to keep your inner faculty intact regardless of what the day brings. The week's concept deepens here: an even mind is not something that happens to you; it is something you keep choosing.
Go deeper
Can you identify a recent situation where you handed over your inner steadiness to something external, where you let a person's behavior or an outcome decide how you felt about yourself?
Practice
The Reframe in Writing
Think of one thing currently troubling you. Write it down as a misfortune in one sentence. Then rewrite the same situation using Epictetus's formula: 'This is not a misfortune; to bear it in a noble spirit is good fortune.' Read both sentences aloud. You are not pretending the first sentence is false; you are training the mind to see that the second sentence is also true.