Epictetus liked using everyday objects in his lessons, and the jug was his favorite. Look at the thing as it is, he said: it is earthenware. Say so out loud when you use it, every day, and then you will not be thrown when it breaks. His students only understood once he took the step that sounds shocking at first: and when you kiss your child or your wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being, for then you will not be undone if they are one day gone. It is the hardest sentence in the Handbook, and at the same time the tenderest if you read it properly: it asks not for less love, but for love without the demand that it last forever.
You can love something and know at the same time that it is finite, or you can refuse to know it. The first feels colder; the second costs more.
That earthenware breaks and people die: never yours, with or without practice. What is yours is the expectation you attach. Epictetus asks not for distance but for accuracy: call things what they are, and the blow does not arrive as betrayal. You still use the jug every day, and precisely because you know it can break, you do not merge with it.
Which jug in your life do you treat as unbreakable? And does your love for it grow or shrink when you admit that it is not?
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases