Christmas Every Day

I do not think that an old fellow like me need have been sitting here
to try and prevent your entertaining abject notions of yourselves, and
talking of yourselves in an abject and ignoble way: but to prevent there
being by chance among you any such young men as, after recognising their
kindred to the Gods, and their bondage in these chains of the body and
its manifold necessities, should desire to cast them off as burdens
too grievous to be borne, and depart their true kindred. This is the
struggle in which your Master and Teacher, were he worthy of the name,
should be engaged. You would come to me and say: "Epictetus, we can no
longer endure being chained to this wretched body, giving food and
drink and rest and purification: aye, and for its sake forced to be
subservient to this man and that. Are these not things indifferent and
nothing to us? Is it not true that death is no evil? Are we not in
a manner kinsmen of the Gods, and have we not come from them? Let us
depart thither, whence we came: let us be freed from these chains that
confine and press us down. Here are thieves and robbers and tribunals:
and they that are called tyrants, who deem that they have after a
fashion power over us, because of the miserable body and what appertains
to it. Let us show them that they have power over none."

And to this I reply:--

"Friends, wait for God. When He gives the signal, and releases you from
this service, then depart to Him. But for the present, endure to dwell
in the place wherein He hath assigned you your post. Short indeed is the
time of your habitation therein, and easy to those that are minded. What
tyrant, what robber, what tribunals have any terrors for those who thus
esteem the body and all that belong to it as of no account? Stay; depart
not rashly hence!"

- Epictetus