Monday Motivation: Every Thing Has Two Handles
Epictetus, in an engraving from about 1700. No portrait of him from life survives, so every picture of him is an artist's best guess. (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.) Epictetus knew something about carrying heavy things. He was born a slave in Rome about 2,000 years ago. His master crippled his leg — the story goes it was broken deliberately, and he bore it without crying out. He was freed eventually, and became a teacher, and the notes his student took down still get read today. So when this man talks about how to carry the hard parts of life, he's not guessing. Here's the picture he gives, from his handbook (the classic translation): "Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, don't lay hold of it by that handle — that he acted unjustly — for by that it cannot be carried. Lay hold of it by the other: that he is your brother, that you were brought up together. And then y...