There is a name you use for yourself about the thing you are good at. Epictetus’s first instruction in this passage is about that name, and it comes before anything he says about what to tell people. 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.
A name like that covers every day and every room. He says on no occasion, which tells you how long it is in force — all of them, including the ones where the subject never comes up. Eating as you ought to eat covers one meal. He tells us to drop the claim that stands and keep the one that happens once.
The name is a store. Once you have it you do not have to be good at the thing today, because the name carries yesterday into the room on your behalf. What it costs is paid during the thing itself. A standing claim can be tested at any moment, so every occasion in that area now holds two jobs — doing the thing, and being the one who does it. The second job never finishes, because there is no occasion on which the name is off duty.
Refusing the name out loud is the same name turned over. I’m no expert, I just fiddle with it — that is still an account of what you are, handed to the room, and now there are two things to keep consistent instead of one.
Leaving the name unused costs you the store. Today’s meal is the only evidence there is, and nobody walks into the next room carrying a picture of you as the one who knows. People who would have been impressed will pass over you, and they will be right to, because there is nothing there for them to go on except what you are doing in front of them.
So what are we aiming at. We want the name to sit there unused while the thing gets done.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- Someone asks what you do, and you hear which word arrives first.
- A friend’s son asks you about something you have done for years.
- You are in a kitchen and somebody else is cooking the dish you cook well.
In all three the thing to watch is the same. One question, two answers. Am I doing this thing, or am I being the one who does it.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to go without the name. Watch which one is in use, and leave it as it is.