Epictetus: or Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

Or I should say "Don'tus Sweatus the Smallus Stuffii." I have heard, in many places, a similar message to Epictetus' message of Stoicism. It is pleasant to consider that there is an eternal and divine center in us that is the only area for which we should show concern. Much of Christian doctrine was, I suspect, adapted to take advantage of the stream in Roman consciousness that rendered Stoicism the unofficial religion of the 2nd century empire. Epictetus tells us that as children of the divine we need only to strive to develop divine in us, reason, to achieve peace. Everything else except our judgment is outside our control. By extension anything that is outside our control should also be beyond our concern. Tempting.
In a similar vein, in his book Zen in the Martial Arts, Joe Hyams relates a story from Bruce Lee. It runs more or less like this: Extend your leg in your best side kick; imagine there is a marker reaching from the bottom of your heel to the ground; rotate on your standing leg in a full turn so there is a circle on the ground whose radius is the length of your kick; This is the area for which you need to be concerned. Anyone who is outside that circle is not a threat in martial arts terms.
In both cases I don't believe they argue for inaction; these snippets are after all a small summary of much longer philosophical statements. I see them rather as lessons about endurance, centering, and the limits of our influence. We cannot control whether or not... fill in the blank: our neighbors like us, our boss leaves early every night, our x-boyfriend has met someone and on and on. The key is to discern correctly what is a matter for your judgment or what is in the circle. So often we spend lots of energy on things which do not directly concern us. Those are to be endured with good spirit or to be irrelevant depending on whether you reference Epictetus or Lee. Where we fail more egregiously however, is in not discerning things that are in our control. To bend political for a moment, those millions of people who surrender their vote because they claim well it just doesn't matter what I think are an excellent example of not discerning that their judgment is required. The beauty of democracy is that your vote determines who gets to tell you what to do. Yes not directly, and with some corruption, but those parts should not be the concern, only the small matter that falls within your circle. More often it plays out in more personal ways. Staying in a job you find unfulfilling or unpleasant for example. This sort of circumstance should not be endured lightly, but only with consideration. Personally my life has given me some challenge over the last several years, none of it life threatening, most of it beyond my control, all of it at times worrisome. The trick for me is to devote the time to discern what requires action and what endurance. Simple :-|