Yesterday is done, so there’s no worry there. But today? What will it bring? No one can say. Certainly no one can honestly promise you that it will be easy.

Would you even listen to them if they did?

After a year that brought a pandemic, a recession, an impeachment, hurricanes and floods, murder hornets and so much else?

The Stoics would say that there is no hope of taking the teeth out of this world. All we can do is toughen ourselves up. All we can do is be prepared. All we can do is our best. 

“Let us, then, be up and doing,” Longfellow wrote. “With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.”

This—this—is the Stoic prescription. Seneca said that fortune behaves as she pleases. Marcus Aurelius said that they will come at us with knives and jeers. But? No matter. We will face it boldly and bravely. We will be ready for anything. We will labor. We will wait (months, in quarantine, if we have to.) We will keep achieving. We will be up and doing. We will never stop pursuing. 

Because the world cannot break us. The world cannot deter us. It can alter our places, sure. It can knock us down. But we will get back up. We will be stronger in the broken places. We will keep being good, no matter what other people say or do. 

We’ll greet it all with a smile. We’ll love every second of it.