【每日斯多葛】11月2日

November 2nd

BINDING OUR WISHES TO WHAT WILL BE

“But I haven’t at any time been hindered in my will, nor forced against it. And how is this possible? I have bound up my choice to act with the will of God. God wills that I be sick, such is my will. He wills that I should choose something, so do I. He wills that I reach for something, or something be given to me—I wish for the same. What God doesn’t will, I do not wish for.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.1.89

When General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to his wife on the eve of the invasion of Normandy, he told her, “Everything we could think of has been done, the troops are fit everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods.” He’d done everything he could—and now, what would happen would happen and as Epictetus might say, he was ready to bear whatever that was. In fact, Eisenhower had written another letter that night and prepared it for release in case the invasion failed. If failure was what God—or fate or luck or whatever you want to call it—willed, he was ready.

There is a wonderful lesson there. The man in charge of perhaps the most powerful army the world had ever assembled, on the eve of the most expertly organized and planned invasion the world will hopefully ever know, was humble enough to know that the outcome ultimately belonged to someone or something bigger than him.

And so it goes with all our ventures. No matter how much preparation, no matter how skilled or smart we are, the ultimate outcome is in the lap of the gods. The sooner we know that, the better we will be.

11月2日 

让自己的愿望顺应未来

“我的意志从未受到阻碍，也从未被迫违背自身的意愿。这何以可能？因为我已经使自己的行动选择与神的意志融为一体。神希望我生病，我也愿意如此；神希望我作出某种选择，我便作出同样的选择；神希望我追求某物，或让某物降临于我，我也怀有同样的愿望。凡神所不愿的，我亦不求。”

——爱比克泰德，《论说集》，4.1.89

诺曼底登陆前夕，德怀特·D.艾森豪威尔将军在写给妻子的信中说道：“凡是我们能够想到的准备工作，都已经完成。部队状态良好，每个人都在竭尽全力。结果如何，只能听凭天意。”

他已经做了一切力所能及的事。至于接下来会发生什么，就让它自然发生吧。用爱比克泰德的话来说，他已准备好承受任何结果。事实上，那天晚上，艾森豪威尔还写好了另一封信，准备在登陆失败时公布。倘若失败是上帝、命运、运气，或任何你愿意称呼的力量所作出的安排，他也已坦然做好准备。

这里蕴含着一个深刻的教益。这位统率着或许是人类历史上最强大军队的将领，在一场组织与筹划之精密、但愿后世不再重演的军事登陆行动前夕，依然保持着足够的谦卑。他深知，最终的结果并不完全掌握在自己手中，而是取决于一种超越个人的力量。

我们人生中的一切事业，莫不如此。无论准备多么充分，无论我们多么能干、多么聪明，最终的结果都不完全由我们决定。越早领悟这一点，我们便越能从容地面对人生。