31. Get Your Thinking about the Gods Right

Piety, for Epictetus, is not ceremony. It is getting your thinking about the gods right, and then living as if it were true.

The heart of piety toward the gods is to form right opinions about them.

Think of them as existing, and as governing the universe with goodness and justice.

Set yourself to obey them, to yield to them, and to follow along willingly in all events, knowing they come from the most perfect understanding.

This way, you will never find fault with the gods, or accuse them of not caring for you.

This can be done only by pulling yourself away from the things not in our own power, and by placing good and evil only in the things that are.

If you suppose any of the things not in your power to be either good or evil, when you miss what you wished, or fall into what you would avoid, you will have to blame and complain against whoever seems to be the cause.

Every animal is by nature made to run from and to hate the things that look harmful, and their causes, and to chase and love the things that look helpful, and their causes.

A person who thinks he has been harmed cannot rejoice in the one he believes harmed him, any more than he can rejoice in the harm itself.

This is why a son curses his father when the father does not hand him the things the son thinks are good. The belief that kingship was a good made Polynices and Eteocles enemies. It is why the farmer, the sailor, the merchant, and the one who loses wives and children, all curse the gods.

Where our interest is, there our piety follows.

The one, then, who is careful to order his desire and his aversion as he should, is by the same means careful of piety.

Still, it is right for every person to offer drink offerings and sacrifices and first fruits, in the customs of his country, with clean hands, and without sloppiness, without carelessness, without meanness, and without going beyond his means.

What this means. How you think about what runs the world shapes how you meet every morning. Trust the order of things, and thanks will come easily. Fight it, and nothing will feel like enough.