There is a moment when the talk turns to something you know well. Someone asks a question, or the conversation drifts your way, and the room turns toward you as the one who knows. Epictetus had a picture for what happens next, and it is a sheep. Let’s read him.
On no occasion call yourself a philosopher, and do not speak much among the uninstructed about theorems (philosophical rules, precepts): but do that which follows from them. For example at a banquet do not say how a man ought to eat, but eat as you ought to eat. For remember that in this way Socrates also altogether avoided ostentation: persons used to come to him and ask to be recommended by him to philosophers, and he used to take them to philosophers: so easily did he submit to being overlooked. Accordingly if any conversation should arise among uninstructed persons about any theorem, generally be silent; for there is great danger that you will immediately vomit up what you have not digested.
For even sheep do not vomit up their grass and show to the shepherds how much they have eaten; but when they have internally digested the pasture, they produce externally wool and milk. Do you also show not your theorems to the uninstructed, but show the acts which come from their digestion.
What we know can leave us in two ways. It can come back up the way it went in, as the rule itself, recited, so that people can see how much has been taken in. Or it can be digested and come out as something that no longer looks like the rule at all: the way a man eats at the banquet, the wool, the milk. The grass is proof of the sheep’s eating. The wool is for the shepherd.
People came to Socrates, the best-known philosopher in Athens, and asked him to introduce them to philosophers. He walked them over to somebody else. So easily did he submit to being overlooked. The word that matters is easily. He was not holding a place as the one who knows, so there was nothing to give up when he was passed by.
The one who shows the grass pays for it. The conversation becomes about him, and he needs the room to stay turned his way, so a person who knows more is a small threat and a person who knows less is an audience. There is a second cost in the passage. What comes up immediately is what has not been digested. The speed is the sign.
The one who gives the wool pays too. Nobody may ever know that he knew. He gets overlooked, the way Socrates did, and the default setting counts that as a loss every single time.
So what are we aiming at. We want what we know to come out as wool.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- At dinner someone raises a subject you have read a great deal about, and your first sentence is already forming.
- A friend asks about something you have been through, and you feel yourself settle into the chair of the one who has done this before.
- Someone telling a story they are enjoying gets a small fact wrong.
In all three the thing to watch is one question, and it has two answers. Is this for them, or is this to show how much I have eaten. The grass usually comes up quickly, before anyone has asked for it.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to hold your tongue. Watch what rises, and leave it as it is.