What's the second arrow? The first arrow is all that stuff we just talked about. Someone says something rude to you. A car breaks down. A business fails. A deal falls through. A job opportunity slips away.
What follows though, is the second arrow—when we ruminate on our suffering, when we blame ourselves, when we tell ourselves we'll never recover, when we choose to feel singled out. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius would talk about how the harm doesn't come so much from the event but from feeling harmed by it. That is the second arrow.
We choose to say we've been insulted. We choose to think "I'll never recover." We choose resentment. We choose self-doubt afterwards. We choose to despair or give up on humanity. And it is here, not in the event itself, that the real harm is done. Not just in our perceptions, but in how it changes us and our behavior going forward.
The first arrow is coming. Let's avoid shooting ourselves with the second one.
There's a reason why Dr. Laurie Santos wears a Memento Mori ring—the persistent reminder of the inevitability of death puts the events of today in perspective. Remember, as Marcus Aurelius said, that you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do or think.
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