The Double Standard of Grief — The Enchiridion

Epictetus says the will of nature can be learned from what we already agree on. When the neighbor's boy breaks a cup, we are ready at once to say these are casualties that will happen. Be assured, then, when your own cup is likewise broken, you ought to be affected just as when another's cup was broken. The lesson is not coldness. It is consistency.

The middle scales the same move. Apply it to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say this is an accident of mortality. The phrase arrives easily for other people's rooms. We treat distant loss as part of the pattern we already name out loud.

The closing exposes the split. If anyone's own child happens to die, it is immediately alas, how wretched am I. Same event, different owner, different voice. Epictetus does not forbid grief. He asks you to remember how you were affected on hearing the same thing concerning others, then bring that agreed response to your own cup when it breaks.