Your Happiness

depends on you...

This teaching comes from a stoic philosopher called Epictetus, who lived a great part of his life as a slave. All who knew him could comprehend the wisdom of this man who, apart from his bad destiny, he always had a peaceful countenance and irradiated an inner happiness. 

Epictetus ascertained that there are things that depend on oneself, as veracity, honor, dignity, respect, love, justice, etc., since to cultivate these virtues is possible only through one’s own will and not through imposition.

Never the less, he said - there are many things that do not depend on us - as fortune, fame, prestige, success, power, that we may have in a certain moment but sooner or later will escape from our hands as fast as it came. True happiness - he taught – is achieved by the practise and development of virtues that depend only from the power of will of man.

This happiness is maintained during success as much as during failure, in joy or in pain. It is a happiness that is not dependant on external circumstances, but depends only on one self and this is why it can be deeper and long lasting. Nowadays many believe that it is possible to be happy only when they possess a long list of material possessions (that being in itself material,  is perishable and finite) or when they achieve renown, love, prestige, although all these do not depend on us!

If you really want to discover who you are and who you can become, if you want to discover a true inner peace and encounter the meaning of your life, try to better yourself every day: become more organized, more polite, more tolerant, more just, more good...
Remember that you can be better than what you think and stronger than what you believe.