All the small things.

Since 2020, I feel like every year we all collectively look at each other hopefully on January 1st and say, "Well, it's got to be better than last year, right?"

So how's 2025 so far?

I was going to write a whole diatribe with many bullet points about the things that are frustrating me (and they are legion), my take on current events, a treatise of my political positions, point out the inconsistencies and hypocrisy and hysteria all around and in general all the things that are threatening to kick-start another stress-driven shingles outbreak.  And then I remembered my Stoics.

I'm not a Stoic by nature.  I am prone to anxiety and anger.  I get really stressed out about current events, from Biden's ghostwritten presidency to Trump's bullying foreign policy to preventable disease outbreaks to Doge uprooting the government to the perpetual hysteria over literally any statement or policy that comes from the current president.  I am greatly frustrated by things outside my control, and often disappointed in people.  But I aspire to Stoicism. There is a lot of comfort and empowerment to be found in a philosophy that emphasizes controlling what you can, doing good simply because it is right to do so, and letting go of what was never in your hands to begin with.  

Here are some quotes that have comforted and inspired me lately.  Some are from officially labeled Stoics, and others are less official but no less applicable.

• "We are often more frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality." --Seneca

• "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." --Epictetus

• "Never let the future disturb you.  You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."  --Marcus Aurelius

• "Give yourself a gift: the present moment." --Marcus Aurelius

• "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." --Gandalf, The Return of the King

• "Be patient in afflictions, for thou shalt have many; but endure them, for, lo, I am with thee, even unto the end of thy days."  --Doctrine and Covenants 24:8

• "Life gets easier when you stop fighting it.  The rain will fall whether you complain or not.  Traffic will resist whether you stress or not.  People will act how they want whether you worry or not.  Focus on what you can change. Let go of what you can't."  --Anonymous Facebook

• "Waste no time arguing about what a good man should be.  Be one." --Marcus Aurelius

The world is in upheaval right now. It's scary.  It's uncomfortable.  Sometimes it's even harmful.  But there will be good things that come out of it, too.   If we can question our own reactions and understanding, if we can stick to facts instead of emotions or opinions, if we can see each other as people and not caricatures of Good and Bad, if we can just remember to keep breathing and to do good because it is the right thing to do, we are going to make it through this.  Shaken, perhaps even bruised, but intact.  We're all here now because every generation before us has weathered their own political and social chaos, wars and plagues and famines and bigotry, and every generation has objectively had it better than the one before it in so many ways.  The same holds true for us even if it doesn't feel like it right now.  It will hold true for our children.

So take a breath.

At least there aren't murder hornets.  That's something.

Invasive 'murder hornets' are wiped out in the US, officials say