Book 4, Letter 3, Part 3 of 3 To Epictetus: on the big question

This week, I have been pondering how best to assist a young niece of mine who has begun asking the big questions, including the big one that seems to underlie all the others: What's the point? 

I'm not coming to you for answers on this, not straight away, but as usual, I find an answer for myself by simply opening your book.  There is a danger, I think, in searching for answers with an expectation that the answers can be given to you by a teacher.

Least of all in philosophy.

Chapter 15

What philosophy promises

When a man was consulting him (Epictetus) how he should persuade his brother to cease being angry with him, Epictetus replied: 

Philosophy does not propose to secure for a man any external thing. If it did philosophy would be allowing something which is not within its province. For as the carpenter's material is wood, and that of the statuary is copper, so the matter of the art of living is each man's life. 

"What then is my brother's?" 

That again belongs to his own art; but with respect to yours, it is one of the external things, like a piece of land, like health, like reputation. But Philosophy promises none of these.  "In every circumstance I will maintain," philosophy says, "the governing part conformable to nature." 

Whose governing part? 

"His in whom I am," she says.

"How then shall my brother cease to be angry with me?" 

Bring him to me and I will tell him. But I have nothing to say to you about his anger.

When the man, who was consulting him, said, "I seek to know this-
how, even if my brother is not reconciled to me, shall I maintain
myself in a state conformable to nature?" 

Nothing great, said Epictetus, is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it requires time: let it flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen. Is, then, the fruit of a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily? 

Do not expect it, even if I tell you. 

Answers to the big questions do not come quickly.  They grow inside us one day at a time.  My niece will find her way, and I will drink coffee with her, and play music with her, and try to be her friend.  The road she must tread is her own.

With gratitude and respect.

Morgan.

PS.
There is a comic strip about you....

https://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Epictetus