What You Do With What Happens

A distinguishing element of the Stoics is the following: they accepted reality—the real, the here, and the now. It wasn’t a passive acceptance they exhibited (read: succumbing to their reality), but an active one marked by a commitment to operating at their highest capacity within the circumstances they found themselves.

This means we are to actively identify ways to be improved by the realities we’re faced with, rather than diminished by them. The Stoics would say that at minimum, our task is to exist with a calm equanimity amidst our circumstances, as even this is movement toward strengthening our resolve.

The path toward acceptance asks two questions: 1). Can this be changed? and 2). If the answer is no, what work needs to be done to accept this, emotional or otherwise?

Epictetus might be one of history’s best examples of being edified by misfortune. A disabled slave, his thoughts and writings helped to form the basis of Stoic philosophy. His reality was something that many of us would describe as unideal, to say the least. And yet, instead of lamenting his circumstance to the point of hopelessness, he bore it dutifully and as a result, produced perspective-altering work that would shape receptive minds for generations to come.

"Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources," Epictetus expresses in Sharon Lebell's interpretation of The Art of Living. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths. Prudent people look beyond the incident itself and seek to form the habit of putting it to good use."

When we choose to accept what has happened, we accelerate our way toward what's next, toward what it is we're being sharpened and trained for. Be the one who puts what happens to good use.

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