adversity is the worst right experiencing Fortune's habit as senica put it of Behaving however she pleases is brutal right Exiles illnesses Financial setbacks shipwrecks floods and famines these types of reverses are bad right they don't have to be Zeno's shipwreck led to the founding of stoicism senica's Exiles and formed some of his greatest writing it's because Marcus Aurelius did not receive the good fortune that he deserved as the ancient historians noted that we so admire him without the plague and the floods and the wars he would have been an ordinary man even forgettable epicus was
shaped and informed yes ultimately improved by the terrible Crucible of those years in slavery just as vice admiral James Stockdale was by his time in the hanoy Hilton during the Vietnam war since their lives proved it we can imagine the stoics would have liked the line from dawn Draper in Madmen let's also say that change is neither good nor bad it simply is it can be greeted with Terror or Joy a tantrum that says I want it the way it was or a dance that says look something new but the stoics knew that it was
more than just a game of perception it's what you do about it it's how you respond you choose to see the events of Life neither good nor bad just objective just reality yes that's part one but part two is the most important it's the making them good it's seeing it not just as new but as a new opportunity and then making good on it as Stockdale said making it something that in retrospect you'd never have traded away
