Epictetus saw the cream of the Roman crop. Hadrian, the emperor, dropped in on his classes. The empire’s best families sent their most promising students to him. He himself studied under Musonius Rufus, who was known as the Roman Socrates. Epictetus might well have bumped into Seneca while they both worked in the administration.

Yet for all this, Epictetus was pretty disappointed in what he saw. “How much I’d like to see a Stoic,” he once said, one who actually lived up to the teachings, managing to be happy in all circumstances–be they exile or death, adversity or success. He’d been looking his whole life, he told his students, and had not found a one.

​So despairing of perfection, he lowered the standards, lowering them to one much more reachable for us. If we can’t be a true sage, he said, let’s at least try to be someone actively forming themselves on the model. Let’s at least try. He was saying that while we might never measure up, we can at least do our best. We can show ourselves to be someone making progress, someone committed to the fight, someone who refuses to accept that there isn’t hope for us, that we’re all that we can be in this moment.

None of us are perfect Stoics. Epictetus wasn’t. Marcus Aurelius wasn’t. We’re going to slip. We’re going to fall short—dismally short most likely. But we can’t give up. We must show that we are trying, that we’re actively transforming ourselves to get and be better. We can at least be that.​

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