MF 22: Life itself as a test

Life must be recognized, thought, lived, and practiced as a constant test.
Life in its entirety, with its system of tests and hardships, is an education.
You don't become a champion at the Olympic games without sweat.
Epictetus: We can benefit from every difficulty and trouble. Confronted by something that happens to us, for example the death of someone close to us, an illness, loss of wealth, or an earthquake, we should say to ourselves that each of these events, whatever it may be and however accidental it may seem, is really part of the order of the world and its necessary sequence. We should consider that what we believe to be an evil is not really an evil. It is only our opinion that separates us and distances us from the rational point of view and from rational being. All these events are part of the order of the world, and consequently not an evil.

Oedipus at Colonus: Of all this I was innocent. No one can reproach me. Who then would not have killed an insolent old man as I did, since I did not know he was my father? Who then would not have married a woman, not knowing it was my mother? Of all this I was innocent and the gods have pursued me with a vengeance that was not and could not be a punishment. But now we are here, exhausted by ordeals, I come to give a power to the earth where I will die, a new, protective power given to me precisely by the gods.

It is gods that surround good men with the series of tests, misfortunes, etc, necessary to form them. God prepares them: the men he tests he prepared for himself.

Greek novels are long adventure stories which are also stories of voyages, misfortunes, and trials and tribulations, across the Mediterranean world and which in one sense slip easily into the lodge within the major form defined by the Odyssey. It involved knowing who would finally prevail, man or gods. The theme that life must be a formative test of the self appears very clearly. The outcome should be purity of the self in the sense of that over which one exercises vigilance, surveillance, protection, and mastery. The question permeating these novels is quite simple that of virginity. Will the girl keep her virginity, will the boy keep his virginity, will those who are committed to preserving this personal purity, keep their virginity? All these episodes are constructed in order to know the extent to which they will be able to preserve this virginity which, in this literature, seems to me to be like the visible form of the relationship to the self in its transparency and mastery. Preserving virginity so that it is still intact, integral, for both the boy and the girl when, having finally returned home, they find each other again and are legally married. It seems to me that the preservation of this virginity is nothing other than the figurative expression of what, throughout the trials and tribulations of life, must be preserved and maintained to the end: the relationship the one's self. Once again, one lives for one's self.