Would you be upset that someone isn't tall? Or would you accept it? Certainly you understand that certain people are drawn to poetry and others to science or engineering, that some love country music and others love dense history books. Yet you're surprised when someone is rude to you, or when someone holds a retrograde opinion, or fails to say thank you or spouts crazy conspiracy theories? As if such things aren't, as Marcus Aurelius points out in a famous pseudo-mathematical proof in Meditations, a statistical probability? As if there wasn't going to be someone, somewhere that thought or acted like that. The point is that different people have not just different interests, but also that a diverse world is going to have a diverse array of different kinds of people. Some will be wonderful and kind. Some will be annoying. Some will be that mob of people shouting at little kids trying to integrate a public school…some people will be volunteering to help starving children in countries far away. Some will contain multitudes—like people who fought bravely against fascism in WWII and then came home and upheld fascism in those public schools that mobs were gathering around. People are complicated. People are contradictory. People have limitations and flaws. People will inspire you one moment and utterly disappoint you the next. The person who disappointed you, who you disagree with on nearly everything, may one day surprise you with some moment of principled bravery…and then go right back to being the things you dislike. You can't let this confuse you. You can't let it disillusion you either. You shouldn't let it make you upset. You have to learn how to take it in stride—which is not the same thing as accepting or agreeing—because the more it throws you off your game, the more power it gives them. The more power it takes away from you. A Stoic doesn't waste energy wishing people were different. A Stoic uses their energy to stay steady, to stay good, to stay in control. Because in the end, the only thing you control is you. —Today's newsletter is sponsored by BetterHelp. "Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily." August is the perfect time to return to that work. BetterHelp offers therapy you can fit into any schedule—because self-mastery doesn't take a vacation. *** |
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