article: Epictetus on Love and Loss: The Stoic Strategy for Surviving Heartbreak

[MatureDJ]

Epictetus on Love and Loss: The Stoic Strategy for Surviving Heartbreak

“Who is good if he knows not who he is? and who knows what he is, if he forgets that things which have been made are perishable, and that it is not possible for one human being to be with another always?”

getpocket.com

In the midst of what feels like an unsurvivable loss, how do we moor ourselves to the fact that even the most beautiful, most singularly gratifying things in life are merely on loan from the universe, granted us for the time being?

Two millennia ago, the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD) argued that the antidote to this gutting grief is found not in hedging ourselves against prospective loss through artificial self-protections but, when loss does come, in orienting ourselves to it and to what preceded it differently — in training ourselves not only to accept but to embrace the temporality of all things, even those we most cherish and most wish would stretch into eternity, so that when love does vanish, we are left with the irrevocable gladness that it had entered our lives at all and animated them for the time that it did.

 

[Mike32ct]

I agree with the “Better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.”

If you have a past love affair, at least you walk away with the fond memory of what DID happen.

But it you are a Friendzonedcel, you have to carry the not so fond “memory” that nothing happened.

 

[MatureDJ]

I agree with the “Better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.”

If you have a past love affair, at least you walk away with the fond memory of what DID happen.

But it you are a Friendzonedcel, you have to carry the not so fond “memory” that nothing happened.

And, just as for Raphaël, if you never experience it as a teenager, your future is ruined:

 

[Mike32ct]

Exactly. Can end up like Marty also.

 

[MatureDJ]

Exactly. Can end up like Marty also.

"Roller" Steve Hoca recommends this movie. The ironic thing is that it was a lot easier for incel-tier men like Marty to at least have a chance to mack a chick.