What We Materially Take For Granted (Epitectus Sec 25-30)

We often omit the simple, but valuable things in the courseof life. We omit them because we think of them as insignificant and as non-important. One of the most common misconceptions is when a person is not invited to a "banquet", as Eptectus refers to it: "Indeed you have something: you did not praise some one you did not wish to praise, and you did not have to put up with the people around his door" (Epitectus Sec 25). So as he wisely refers to this, is that we often do not see, that we win or loose something in life. If you are not invited to a banquet, you do not loose at all, since your attention is not diverted from yourself towards the obnoxious host. You save your attention, it is not wasted. Anyways you are prived of the banquet, but the ones who attended it, had to pay a price, that you still conserve. 

In a higher state, obviously regarding people, humans we tend to do the same thing. When we brag about being fair to the neighbor, and understanding the neighbor it is actually facetious, because we really do not feel any pain or true grief, because it has not happened to myself, it is only the neighbor: "Someone else's child is dead, or his wife. There is no one would not say, "It's the lot of a human being." But when one's own dies, immediately it is, "Alas! Poor me!" (Epitectus Sec 26). Unfortunately, this is true, we will never feelanother person's torment, for it does not lie in our mind, in our hearts, in our souls.