On what troubles us

This line answers a specific confusion Epictetus saw in his students: they blamed events for their misery, as if grief and fear traveled inside the events themselves, waiting to strike. He denies it. A death, an exile, a loss: the thing arrives bare. What wounds us is the judgment we lay over it. He is careful in the same passage to name the consequence. To accuse others for our troubles is untaught; to accuse ourselves is to have begun learning; to accuse no one is to have finished. The claim is not that hardship is imaginary. It is that our verdict on hardship is the part we still hold.

This week, at a Los Angeles premiere, the actor Kristen Stewart reacted to news that Hollywood's Cinerama Dome will be restored and reopened after years dark. Her response was equal parts hope and dread: "I hope they don't fuck it up," before adding, "No, they won't. I'm so grateful." It is the exact motion Epictetus described: the event is a beloved building coming back, and the torment is the opinion we bring to it, the fear of ruin we supply ourselves, before a single frame is projected.