Of course it's not easy, not even for Epictetus…

Page 70. Of course it's not easy, not even for Epictetus . But he believed that if we truly knew what it meant that what we love is perishable if we could inhabit that truth, then we would outsmart Greif. Alas, my dear friend died. Well, what did you expect? That she would live forever? But you might expect, or Hope, that she would live another year. Isn't that what we want, as a rule, for partners, families, and friends? It hurts when death thwarts that desire.

— from The Landing (Death) · Life is hard bykieran setiya

In the book

The work of grieving well is not to end the relationship but to let it become the changed thing it now has to be; the loss is not an experience to be surmounted and filed away but an event to live alongside, and, when you are able, to grow from. The Stoic Epictetus knew how hard this is even for the wise — he taught that if we could truly inhabit the truth that what we love is perishable, we would outwit grief, and then admitted how rarely any of us manage it. There is a gentler counsel, too — that in deep grief a person may need, for a time, to turn down the beam of his own reason slightly, because relentless clear-sightedness can be its own cruelty. — The Landing (Death)

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