Of the things that are, some are up to us and some are not. Up to us are judgment, impulse, desire, and aversion — in a word, whatever is our own doing. Not up to us are the body, property, reputation, and public office — in a word, whatever is not our own doing.

Everything begins here. Epictetus sorts the whole of experience into two bins: what is up to us (ἐφ' ἡμῖν) and what is not. On our side fall only the motions of the mind — the judgment we form, the impulse we act on, what we go after and what we back away from. On the other side falls almost everything a person usually fights for: the body, money, standing, office. His claim is not that the second list is worthless, but that it was never ours to command, and that treating it as if it were is the whole mechanism of being disturbed. The move is deliberately stark, and Epictetus means it as a tool, not a creed. If freedom and trouble both live only in the first list, then the work of a life shrinks to something you can actually do: tend the judgments. Marcus Aurelius, who read Epictetus closely, keeps returning to exactly this line — "take away the opinion, and the hurt is gone." What looks like a narrowing is meant as a release: you are handed back the one thing that was always in your power, and relieved of responsibility for the rest.