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March 13th

ONE DAY IT WILL ALL MAKE SENSE

“Whenever you find yourself blaming providence, turn it around in

your mind and you will see that what has happened is in keeping

with reason.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.17.1

art of the reason we fight against the things that happen is that we’re so
focused on our plan that we forget that there might be a bigger plan we
don’t know about. Is it not the case that plenty of times something we
thought was a disaster turned out to be, with the passage of time, a lucky
break? We also forget that we’re not the only people who matter and that
our loss might be someone else’s gain.
This sense of being wronged is a simple awareness problem. We need to
remember that all things are guided by reason—but that it is a vast and
universal reason that we cannot always see. That the surprise hurricane was
the result of a butterfly flapping its wings a hemisphere away or that
misfortune we have experienced is simply the prelude to a pleasant and
enviable future.