14.If you wish your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you are foolish; for you wish things to be in your power which are not so; and what belongs to others to be your own. So likewise, if you wish your servant to be without fault, you are foolish; for you wish vice not to be vice, but something else. But if you wish not to be disappointed in your desires, that is in your own power. Exercise, therefore, what is in your power. A man’s master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish for nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.

This passage reminds me a lot to the Serenity Prayer found twice in Slaughter House-Five.


I strongly agree with what is said on this passage. I do believe that a man will only be free when he seizes to be dependent on others and starts acting on whatever he can control.

I've thought about it many times and this was basically the conclusion I reached when I started to think about life. I thought about the meaning of every second of your life because at every moment, you have hundreds of different possibilities and every possibility leads to an infinite amount of theoretical "destinies."

As opposed to Slaughter House Five, where Billy had no choice to alter the course of his life. I believe that we are constantly shaping our future and all the possibilities come down to our actions.

I believe that you can accomplish anything that you want because you are in control. Yet, you have to take into account that we share our existence with six and a half billion of others who also have control on their lives. This being said, we can try over and over and accomplish our goals only if we become independent from others and our surroundings.

(I know that you are supposed to do close reading but I really wanted to talk about this topic, which coincidentally was related to the Epictetus.)