I

September 6th

THEY CAN THROW YOU IN CHAINS, BUT...

“You can bind up my leg, but not even Zeus has the power to break

my freedom of choice.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.1.23

t was said that Epictetus walked with a permanent limp as a result of
being chained up as a slave. Two thousand years later, James Stockdale
also had his legs chained in irons (and his arms bound behind his back and
pulled from the ceiling, repeatedly wrenching them from their sockets).
Future senator John McCain was in that same prison, subjected to much of
the same abuse. Because his father was famous, McCain was repeatedly
offered by his captors a chance to abandon his men and be sent home early.
He too held tightly to his freedom of choice, declining to submit to that
temptation even though it meant a loss of the physical freedom he must
have ached for.
None of these men broke. No one could make them sacrifice their
principles. That’s the thing—someone can throw you in chains, but they
don’t have the power to change who you are. Even under the worst torture
and cruelties that humans can inflict on one another, our power over our
own mind and our power to make our own decisions can’t be broken—only
relinquished.