The Task at Hand, Rightly Done
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Ἐὰν τὸ παρὸν ἐνεργῇς ἑπόμενος τῷ ὀρθῷ λόγῳ, ἐσπουδασμένως, ἐρρωμένως, εὐμενῶς, καὶ μηδὲν παρεμπόρευμα, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ δαίμονα καθαρὸν ἑστῶτα τηρῇς, ὡσεὶ καὶ ἤδη ἀποδοῦναι δέοι· ἐὰν τοῦτο συνάπτῃς μηδὲν περιμένων μηδὲ Φεύγων, ἀλλὰ τῇ παρούσῃ κατὰ Φύσιν ἐνεργείᾳ καὶ τῇ ὧν λέγεις καὶ Φθέγγῃ ἡρωικῇ ἀληθείᾳ ἀρκούμενος, εὐζωήσεις. ἔστι δὲ οὐδεὶς ὁ τοῦτο κωλῦσαι δυνάμενος.
If you carry out the task before you, following right reason — earnestly, vigorously, kindly — admitting nothing as a distraction, but keeping your own guardian spirit pure and standing firm, as if even now you had to give it back; if you hold to this, expecting nothing and avoiding nothing, but content with your present activity in accordance with nature, and with heroic truthfulness in all you say and utter, you will live well. And there is no one able to prevent this.
Marcus lays out the twofold discipline behind a good life — do the present task with right reason and a pure, ready spirit, and want nothing beyond what nature gives — and insists that no one has the power to take that away.
The sentence is built from two parallel conditionals, and each names a discipline rather than a result. The first (ἐὰν ἐνεργῇς … τηρῇς) asks only that the present task be carried out — earnestly, vigorously, kindly, following right reason — while one's daimon, the guiding spirit within, is kept pure and standing ready, as if it might have to be given back (ἀποδοῦναι) at any instant. That verb belongs to Marcus's recurring language of a life held on loan and always due for restitution; readiness to surrender it on demand is itself treated as a form of purity, not a threat hanging over the task.
The second conditional (ἐὰν τοῦτο συνάπτῃς) adds the companion discipline: holding to that same activity without expectation and without avoidance, content with whatever nature presents and speaking of it with "heroic truthfulness" — a striking epithet, elsewhere reserved for epic courage, here transferred to plain honest speech. The reward, εὐζωήσεις, is not deferred as a future hope but asserted as already secured, and the closing sentence drives the point home with characteristic bluntness: no one — no circumstance, no tyrant, no accident — has the power to stop it. Living well has been relocated entirely inside the one thing genuinely one's own, an early statement of the boundary Epictetus would later sharpen into τὰ ἐφ' ἡμῖν, "what is up to us."
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Meditations 3.12 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/3.12/