How Dethatched is Dethatched?

The first five of the aphorisms of Epictetus Handbook lead you to question the way in which you interpret life. It talks about a person suffering or feeling disappointed or averted because they do not live in the "correct" way. It tells people that to accept life as it is, and to avoid all the suffering and confusions in between if you don’t, one must separate things in life in what is up to us and what isn’t. This way we can’t suffer upon the things that weren’t under our control but we instead accept them as natural because it was supposed to happen. Through this, we avoid disappointments and instead we change our way of thinking. We get detached from things we can’t actually own, such as our family and therefore don’t feel sad when they die or live because they were just a few more human beings that can be replaced. So it’s all about our perspective and how we view things and how we think. "What upsets people are not things themselves but their judgment about the things." So it all depends on the way we react to each occasion and how we deal with ideas and opinions. The text also got my attention when it says that an uneducated person blames others, a partly educated person blames himself and that a well educated person doesn’t accuse anybody, it just understand that there are things that happen in a certain way and one can’t control and that there are other decisions that one takes fully conscious of what one can obtain and what one cannot.

I do believe that there are things that one can’t change in life and should accept but I also think that detaching oneself from all these will not get you a satisfactory life. I do think that one should be careful in the choices one makes avoid getting hurt but I think that one has to accept the things that will hurt you as they are and accept that they hurt you. I believe that to experience happiness and joy one must also suffer because you won’t otherwise enjoy it because you’ve got nothing to compare your happiness to. So when it says you won’t get harmed than it might be right, but you won’t get good feelings at a high rate either. So yes, one should accept some things as they are, yes one should have a good perspective in life and avoid getting confused because you are experiencing a bad outlook, but NO, one should not avoid getting completely dethatched from all that you can’t own because even though one cant own them physically, you do own them sentimentally and they are an important part of your life and a support that always keeps you going, even at the worse moments.