Epictetus’s Two-Word Rule for Difficult Days

0:28 Two words that are often attached to Epictetus is be and forbe. You'll typically see these on quote cards, mugs, posters now and again as tattoos on people's forearms, and they're usually there to represent that something has become settled. But the right way to think about this phrase from Epictetus be and forbear is to view it more like a question.

0:56 When things get difficult, do you tend to run away from it or face it head on? When things get difficult, do you automatically reach for the easy option, the way out? Let's take an example from the week. Think of a difficult situation. We've all had at least one of these. Bring it to mind. It could be a relationship, it could be something that happened, something simple, something big.

1:21 What did you do in that moment? Did you reach for something easy or did you face the challenge directly? Now, where did these words come from? Let me take you on a little journey. The version we have comes through Aulus Gellius, a Roman writer of the second century who kept an enormous miscellany of notes called the Attic Knights, grammar, law, gossip, odd facts, and bits of philosophy.

1:48 In Book 17, chapter 19, Gailius reports what Favorinus said Epictetus used to teach. Favorinus was a well known speaker of the day and reportedly a critic of Epictetus. He's said to have written a work against him. So it's second hand. Epictetus taught it, Favorinus repeated it. Gailius wrote down what Favorinus said.

2:13 You won't find the two word slogan in the discourses or in the handbook, even though it's often credited there. Modern editors print it among Epictetus' fragments. Pavorinus, according to Gilius, says that Epictetus was grumbling a lot because a lot of people call themselves philosophers, and they're way too caught up with their words and appearances rather than their actual deeds.

2:38 Then Gailius quotes Arian, who is responsible for writing down all of Epictetus' teachings, with something even harsher again. If you pour philosophy into someone that hasn't first been cleared out, the philosophy will turn sour into something like urine or vinegar or something worse. It's a gross image, but that's the point.

3:02 Only after that do we get the two words. So the most quoted bit of this chapter arrives as a warning about quoting. Slightly awkward if you've had it printed on something. It's the gap between knowing and doing, about 1900 years before anybody called it that. Two faults, which were by far the worst and most disgusting of all, lack of endurance and lack of self-restraint.

3:27 Then Gailea spells it out. Not being able to put up with the kinds of things we ought to be able to put up with, and not being able to restrain ourselves from the things that we ought to be able to restrain ourselves from or avoid. Keep the word ought in your mind because we're going to be using that shortly.

3:47 The two Greek words are an echo and ap echo. Rolf gives them as be and forbe, and a footnote in his edition says the pe was a stock formula, much like be and forbear is in English. They sound almost identical, and translators keep chasing that echo. Be and forbe persist and resist. A nice visual image you can keep in mind is to hold and hold off.

4:18 Be and forbear. So if a weight is being pushed down on you, you hold the weight, you endure it. You persist, even though the conditions are difficult. And if something's pulling at you, you hold off, you stiff arm the thing away, you keep it away from you, stop it from getting too close to you. So we have for and forbear, persist, resist, hold and hold off.

4:41 They all mean the same kind of thing. If you're if you are already interested in stoicism, you've probably met a tidier version of this idea. Donald Roberts, whose work I really appreciate, and I've interviewed him many times, he links endurance with the things that we feel. Self-restraint with the things that we crave.

5:05 So we have courage on one side and self-control on the other, and it can be seen to link up with those virtues. Obviously, this is a modern interpretation, and it is useful, and it is linked to the ancient distinction, but Gailius doesn't use the word fear and self-control, so you need to see it more like a lens rather than something Epictetus said directly.

5:27 So the question is, if the paperwork on this phrase is so thin, why should we take them seriously at all, this pair of words? Well, it keeps showing up in the school, over and over again across the ages. Marcus Aurelius in Book 5 of the Meditations asks himself, what is enough to be getting on with for the rest of his life until it ends?

5:50 Part of his answer in George Long's translation is to practice tolerance and self-restraint. And Musonius Rufus, who was Epictetus' teacher, said in a training that the soul is trained for courage by patience under hardship and for self-control by abstinence from pleasures. So appearing courage and self-control isn't totally modern either.

6:14 Musonius Rufus was doing it a generation before Epictetus. This doesn't prove Epictetus coined the slogan, and that doesn't matter. What matters is that these two words were used by the school of Stoicism and they must have been useful. Okay, now back to the question and the practice that started this.

6:33 Think back to that difficult situation. It could be ordinary, but it needs to be slightly difficult. Which half was the hardest for you? Was it the bearing or the forbearing? Was it the holding or the holding off of something? The self-control or was it the endurance? Sometimes the hard part is the easy exit that's presented.

6:57 You're sitting with a dull task and then a distraction appears and you take it. Sometimes it's the other way around. Saying no is easy, but the moment a difficult experience comes up, a feeling that you don't want to feel, you will do almost anything to shut it down. Epictetus makes this point himself in the discourses on a chapter on training.

7:17 He says that different people need to train for different reasons. If you're drawn towards pleasure, you need to train that half. And if you never face difficult things, then that's the area that you need to be working on. You don't need to perfectly balance the two worlds. You can see them as two distinct forms of training, and wherever you think you are weakened and wherever you think you are weakest, right, whether it's in self-control or enduring difficult things, that's where you need to spend more of your time practicing.

7:47 Here are two made-up illustrations to show what I mean. They are situations, not personality types. Imagine someone with a report do. They can sit through a three-hour meeting without a murmur, holding up is fine for them, but the moment the report gets hard, the phone is in their hand, and 15 minutes later they're four videos deep.

8:07 In that situation, the harder word is for bear. Now let's imagine someone else. Never touches the phone at work, but when a colleague says something that stings, they leave the room or change the subject or agree to anything to end the conversation. In that situation, the harder word is be. Same two words, but different training.

8:30 Both halves can go wrong, and the ancients understood this well. Let's address the holding off part first. In the Inchiridian by Epictetus, he says quite early on that most people should try to remove desire entirely. That sounds bleak, yes, but it's only temporary. It's a training device, not a permanent way of life.

8:52 His point is that you're still learning to know what's valuable and what's not valuable. You're learning to know what to want and what to desire. So for the time being, stop reacting on autopilot by chasing everything that just feels good and just pause and remove desire temporarily while you figure this phase out.

9:13 The holding up part is where people really go off the rails, and Epictetus is quite funny about it. In that chapter on training, he says don't train in these like showy feats, like tight drop walking or hugging statues. The point is not to impress anyone, but to do something that's useful. And I think you see this quite a lot when people want to start doing the hard thing or practicing voluntary discomfort.

9:39 They're almost getting comfortable being uncomfortable. And sometimes you have to stop and ask and have a really honest conversation with yourself. What am I really avoiding right now? What am I really struggling with? What's that one area of resistance that I'm choosing not to look at? Just because a lot of people say that bungee jumping is difficult, it's not difficult for everyone.

10:00 Some people are actually drawn to such things. In my own world, I find at this point in my life entering into jujitsu competitions difficult. I get flooded with adrenaline, and that is exactly what I want to do more of. I have friends that genuinely enjoy it. They get excited to compete in jujitsu. They love it, you know, and that's not me.

10:23 So this other person and I have two different experiences when we're doing the same thing. So their form of voluntary discomfort might be something that I find easy. Maybe going in front of a camera and talking. Epictetus quotes Apolinius, and he says that when it's a difficult day, right, you're really warm, maybe you're sweating and you're thirsty.

10:46 Take a nice cold sip of water and then spit it out, and don't tell anyone about it, and don't let anyone see you. That is a really powerful practice for putting up with things, for holding things up, for endurance. The most important bit of this is tell no one. Don't make a show of it. Don't chase validation.

11:10 So if the idea of bear and for bear turns the act into something that you are chasing validation over, something that you want to show off to people over, you are now missing the point in your back to that dirty jar of pouring philosophy into a vessel that has not been cleaned out. You're missing the point.

11:30 We don't want to act virtuous for a reward, and we don't want to do acts of voluntary hardship as a form of self-punishment. We need to always go back to the intention behind the practice. And remember the word ought. This is for things we ought to put up with. If you're in a situation that's abusive, then it's sensible and recommended to leave.

11:51 If you're in danger, sensible to leave. We don't want to force ourselves to do these unnecessarily difficult things. Only ordinary moments. Situations where we know we can cope, but we tend to avoid like a difficult conversation, or we are chasing comfort, we are maybe ending our exercise session a bit quicker, not because we're done, but because we feel a bit lazy.

12:17 Those little moments, this is where the training happens. So here's how I train it: one small practice, and you can pick the half. If a forebear is the harder half of your situation, the next time you feel this pull to chase something easy or to look for an escape or to reach for the phone, wait ten ordinary breaths first.

12:40 You are allowed to then go and do the thing you want to do afterwards, but you don't do it on autopilot. You force yourself to pause and to make that decision intentionally. If bear is the harder half for you, when that discomfort, that ordinary type of discomfort comes up, the type that you would normally run from, same thing.

13:01 You just wait ten breaths, and then you can do what you want to do with intention and purpose. You don't need to breathe in a specific way, breathe normally, but for ten breaths. And if that's difficult, you can count to ten instead. I think ten breaths or counting to ten is just a good modern number to work with.

13:21 No ancient texts actually recommend counting to ten or anything magic about the number ten. But it does give you this bit of pause before you act, and I think that is the useful part here. I think once a day doing this is plenty, if you think about it, that will add up over the weeks and the months. And if you want to use a habit tracker, you can.

13:41 And if you like this kind of thing with the regular reps, the ticking things off, my free seven-day stoic challenge is really good for that too. So what you'll notice if you do this is that sometimes you'll have the ten breaths and then you'll still reach for the phone. Other days you'll have the ten breaths and then realize you don't want to reach for the phone, and sometimes you won't be able to wait for ten breaths or a count of ten.

14:05 Everything is information, it's useful. The key is that we don't abandon the project, we keep practicing. Okay, so back to the dirty jar. Gaileus has epic to say that whoever takes these two words to heart will live a life almost without sin and will be very peaceful and happy. And obviously the keyword there is almost without sin.

14:26 The almost is an important disclaimer. That's a bold promise, and what I'm offering you here is a practice. I am not gonna say to you that this practice, if you do it today, will completely change your world and you'll be a different person in a week from now. But alternatively, you could learn theory like this, learn the words bear and forbear, and do nothing with them.

14:52 And then 20 years later, you still fold the moment something gets difficult or you have a distraction. What I'm offering you here is a rep, and that rep is the gateway into real transformation. Everything is about the small reps that compound over time. I mentioned Musonius Rufus in this talk, he was Epicetus' teacher.

15:13 Thanks, guys. Go well.