24. Will I Be Nobody
The longest chapter so far. Epictetus answers the fears that come when you stop chasing status. Will I be nobody? Will my friends suffer? Will my country lose out?
Do not let thoughts like these trouble you:
"I will live in dishonor and be nobody anywhere."
If dishonor is an evil, you cannot be pulled into evil by the action of another, any more than you can be pulled into anything shameful by another. Is it your business to hold power, or to be invited to a fine dinner? Not at all.
How then can this be a real dishonor to you? How can it be true that you will be nobody anywhere, when you ought to be somebody only in the things that are in your own power, and in those things you may be of the greatest worth?
"My friends will be without help."
What do you mean by without help? They will not receive money from you. They will not be made Roman citizens by you. Who told you that these things are among the things in our own power, and not the work of others?
Who can give to another what he does not have himself?
"Earn them, then," someone says, "so we too can share."
If I can earn them and still keep my own honor and my word and greatness of mind, show me the way, and I will earn them.
If, though, you ask me to lose my own real good so you may gain what is not a real good, see how unfair and foolish your request is.
Which would you rather have, a sum of money, or a friend of honor and good faith? Help me, then, to build that character in myself, rather than asking me to do the things by which I would lose it.
"My country, as far as I can help it, will be without aid."
Again, what help do you mean? "It will not have porches or baths built by you." So what?
A blacksmith does not provide the city with shoes, and a shoemaker does not provide it with weapons. It is enough that each one fully does his own proper work.
If you supply the city with one more citizen of honor and good faith, have you not helped it?
Yes. You are not useless to your country, then.
"What place, then," you ask, "should I hold in the state?"
Whatever place you can hold while keeping your honor and your good faith. If, by wanting to be useful there, you lose these, of what use will you be to your country, once you have become a person without honor or shame?
What this means. You owe your country and your friends your best self. That is the one thing you can actually give them. Lose yourself trying to buy their favor, and you give them nothing.