December 7
What is in our power is by nature free and unhindered. But what is not ours is weak, servile, hindered. Consider: if you take what is servile for free, and what is another’s for your own, you will complain and accuse gods and men. But if you take only what is yours as yours — then no one will compel you any longer and no one will hinder you, and you will have no enemy.
Enchiridion, 1
Listening mode
What is in our power is by nature free and unhindered. But what is not ours is weak, servile, hindered. Consider: if you take what is servile for free, and what is another’s for your own, you will complain and accuse gods and men. But if you take only what is yours as yours — then no one will compel you any longer and no one will hinder you, and you will have no enemy.
Anger often keeps hidden accounts. When something stings, you can ask what you had silently considered yours beforehand: a reply that doesn’t come, a place that went to someone else, the way someone talks about you when you aren’t there. The anger shows you a claim you never voiced, not even to yourself.
That sounds like a simple correction: you strike out the claim, and the anger disappears. But some of these claims are not mere mistakes. Counting on a friend is also a form of closeness. If you no longer expect anything of someone, they cannot disappoint you. But perhaps by then you have already lost them a little.
The difference probably lies less in whether you expect something than in how you hold it. You can hope for a reply without having already entered it in the ledger. That is harder than it sounds. Once a hope has been fulfilled a few times, it turns, unnoticed, into a claim.
When the reply does come, it is once again something someone has given you.
