It's odd, but what I took away from reading Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius was the idea that you can only live your best life and be your best self when you acknowledge that the only things you can absolutely control are your own thoughts, opinions, words and deeds.

When you allow external forces to affect the way you behave, to turn you aside from the things you believe in and the principles you live by, then you will make yourself ashamed. If you spend all your life trying to achieve what it is within the power of others to grant, you live with anxiety and must often pretend to be something you aren't.

If you concentrate on being your best self, then you will of necessity behave in a positive way as an involved citizen. That means trying, by example, persuasion, debate and where necessary confrontation, to bring about a just and equitable society.