In 336 BC the Greek states gathered at Corinth to appoint Alexander commander of the campaign against Persia. Statesmen and philosophers came to congratulate him.
Diogenes did not come. He lived in that city, in extreme simplicity, by tradition in a large storage jar, and he did not go to people.
So Alexander went to him. He found him lying in the sun. The most powerful man in the known world introduced himself and offered to give him whatever he wanted: money, a house, a position, anything at all.
Diogenes looked up and asked him to move aside a little, because he was blocking the sun.
The company laughed at him. Alexander did not. As they rode away and his officers made mocking remarks, he said that if he were not Alexander, he would want to be Diogenes.
Diogenes had been exiled from his birthplace Sinope after an affair involving the defacing of coinage. He founded no school but a way of life, which came to be called Cynicism, and his method was demonstrative: he showed rather than argued.
For the Stoic tradition he is no side path. He taught Crates, and Crates taught Zeno of Citium. The line from this man without possessions runs directly to the school that would later shape emperors, and it is no accident that Marcus Aurelius wrote about fame as he did.
Someone who can genuinely give you anything asks what you want. Whatever you answer says which box you have placed your happiness in.
The tempting sorting is that Diogenes was being rude. It is sharper than that, and his answer is exact rather than insolent.
Everything Alexander had to give belonged in the box that was not Diogenes': wealth, position, safety, influence. Not because those things are bad, but because whoever gives them can also take them back. Accepting them would mean handing the giver something.
What Diogenes did ask for is the only thing the other man was in fact taking from him at that moment: his light. That is not an insult but a correction. You ask me what you can give me; you are at this moment taking something from me, and all I need is that you stop.
Alexander's reaction is the proof that he understood it. He did not laugh along.
It is a story that works excellently and probably did not happen. The meeting is told differently by different sources, and the scene is too well constructed to be above suspicion.
There is moreover a stance in it that is not only admirable. Diogenes made a performance of independence, and whoever demonstrates his detachment is still occupied with it. The Stoa did not adopt his radicalism, and that is not a watering down: Zeno found it harder to have possessions and not cling to them than to throw them away.
If someone made you the same offer today, what would you ask for? And how much of it sits in the box another person can hand over?
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases · Questions or suggestions