Epictetus owned almost nothing, but one object had value: an iron lamp that burned by his household shrine. One night it was stolen. His students may have expected a lesson in indignation; they got the opposite. Tomorrow, said Epictetus, you will find a lamp of clay; that one cannot be stolen at a profit. And about the thief: he won a lamp and lost himself, for at the price of a lamp he became a thief. The earthenware lamp he replaced it with was sold after his death for a fortune, to someone hoping to buy wisdom with it.
The smallest case of all, and therefore the most honest: something of yours is taken, and nobody is watching how you respond.
The lamp was on loan, like everything; the thief merely proved it rather abruptly. What was at stake was not the iron but Epictetus' evening, and that he did not hand over. The thief meanwhile paid the highest price there is: he became someone else.
At which small loss, a scratch, a stolen bicycle, a vanished object, do you routinely hand over your mood as well? And what would the clay lamp be in your life?
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases