A Thought Exercise to Help You Make Peace With Busted Plans
As we enter our most tradition-laden time of year — the Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/New Year’s Eve corridor otherwise known as The Holidays — many of us are struggling to accept the 2020 version of events. We’re starving for things to feel like they used to. We’re stressed about the idea of disappointing others.
It’s a tough time all around. But one thing that can help us through it, as writer Darius Foroux points out, is to “participate in a classic Stoic exercise”:
This is something Epictetus talked about in his philosophy school. He said, “When you are traveling by ship, you can go to the shore, enjoy the scenery, collect shells, or pick flowers. But when you are called back to the ship, you need to drop everything and hurry back, otherwise the ship may leave without you.”
That’s 2020 in a nutshell. We were somewhere enjoying the scenery, maybe picking some flowers. Some of us were already looking at other places to visit on our ship. But we were called back to the ship abruptly: “We’re going home, everybody.”
Read Foroux’s whole piece here:
