And the things up to us are by nature free, unhindered, unobstructed; but the things not up to us are weak, slavish, hinderable, and belong to others.

The two lists are not just differently labeled; they are differently built. Whatever is truly up to you — your judgments, your choices — is free by nature, which means nothing outside can finally block it. Whatever is not up to you is the opposite: weak, dependent, able to be stopped, and ultimately somebody else's. Epictetus is not moralizing here but describing a structure he thinks is simply the case. The word doing the quiet work is ἀλλότριος, "another's." To treat what is another's as your own is, on this view, the standing mistake — it hands your peace to things that were never under your command. The promise hidden in the bleak-sounding words is real: if the free part is the only part that is yours, then the one thing you cannot be robbed of is exactly the thing that matters most.