It can be easy for it to seem like everything is falling apart. The climate. Politics. Culture. This is going wrong and so is that. Everyone’s an idiot. And a jerk. Despair is not far away when we look at things this way (even though, objectively, the world is safer and better than it has ever been).
The funny thing is that we’ve looked at things this way for a long time. A while back, archaeologists found an ancient tablet, some three thousand years ago, and you know what it said? It basically said, there’s something wrong with kids these days. You can read any critic from any era and find the same complaints you find today. Not that things weren’t bad then and that crises don’t happen—it’s just that there is a myopia to our griping and worrying.
That’s what philosophy helps us address. We’re trying to get a wider, bigger perspective. As Anthony De Mello writes, “All mystics—Catholic, Christian, Non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion—are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well.”
Certainly that’s what the Stoics were trying to remind themselves of. Marcus took pains to look at history and see how often the same things were happening over and over and over again (and that this cycle would continue on repeat). Seneca, in his letters, was constantly urging his readers to look on the bright side of things–to focus on what they could do about a given trial or difficulty. And Epictetus said it most succinctly: It’s not situations that upset us, it’s what we think about them.
In short: All is well. Because things have always been this way. All is well. Because to think otherwise doesn’t get us anywhere. All is well. Because if we tell ourselves that’s true, it is.
So whatever happens today, no matter how big a mess you find yourself in, remember that. All is well. All is well.
P.S. This was originally sent on February 17, 2019. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.
