Everything has two handles. That’s Epictetus, and it’s one of those lines that sounds simple until you try to live by it.
Pick something up by the handle of what someone did to you and you can’t carry it. Pick it up by the other handle and you can.
The two handles
Here’s how he puts it in the Enchiridion:
Everything has two handles: one by which it may be borne, another by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold on the affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be borne, but rather by the opposite—that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you; and thus you will lay hold on it as it is to be borne.
Epictetus, The Enchiridion, XLIII, translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1865)
Separate the behaviour from the person
I love the way Brené Brown writes and talks about stuff like this: the way she separates the behaviour from the person. It means I can love the person even if I don’t love their behaviour.
I guess the real question is: is it an isolated behaviour, or is it part of who they are? Are they even aware of it?
Holding the mirror up
When I read that passage, it makes me want to hold the mirror up and look at myself. Where do I beat myself up about a mistake when it’s about the behaviour, not about who I am?
The handle I pick up for other people is often the same one I pick up for myself.
Life happening to me, or for me
The other big thing I learnt years ago now was the difference between life happening to me and life happening for me.
If it’s something that happens to you, you give away all of your control. You let go of the power to make change. You abdicate your own future. At least that’s my experience.
Whereas if I accept it’s unfolding for me, this crazy thing called life, then whilst I can’t predict everything that comes next, I always have a choice. No matter what life gives me, I can choose what I do next. I can choose the meaning I give to things. I can choose the direction I go in.
I put it this way in my book, Done Beats Perfect: “You get to choose the meaning you give to those events.” That’s the two handles in my own words. The event stays the same. The handle is your choice.
