It Will Be Ok
No role is so well-suited to philosophy as the one you’re in right now.
P.S: Most of you loved this previous entry on How To Deal With Toxic People.
“It stares you in the face…no role is so well-suited to philosophy as the one you’re in right now.” — Marcus Aurelius
The news makes it seem like the world is falling apart. A war is unfolding. Planes are crashing. Protesters are out in the streets. World leaders are posturing like schoolboys with nukes. AI’s threatening your job. It can feel scary and overwhelming. But one helpful thing to remember is this. There’s always a crisis. There always has been. And so long as human nature remains what it is, there won’t be a Plato’s perfect Republic. Not now. Not ever.
This doesn’t mean we’re doomed. Stop catastrophizing. Stop adding speculation and conspiracy theories into the mix. Get a grip. Look at the situation as it is and adapt as it evolves. Every disaster that hovers upon us means we return to ourselves. Marcus Aurelius put it well,
“When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self - control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.”
We must remember who we are and what we stand for. We don’t mentally check out. We don’t retreat into personal comfort and forget everyone else. We don’t use the chaos as an excuse to hoard and be selfish, to isolate, or to fall into that lazy nihilism pretending to be cool. That’s not Stoic detachment—it’s cowardice and evasion. Our job is to steady ourselves and control what’s within our reach. We do what we can, as best as we can. Helping each other is what keeps us strong.
Have we forgotten we made it through the pandemic just five years ago? We lost people. Our lives changed. Some of us still haven’t recovered from the third order effects. But we came out the other side. And not just alive—even better in many ways. We saw the depth of our love when the seismic forces of grief cracked us open. We saw the kind of resilience we could summon when people needed us to show up. We found out how strong we are when there was no one else to be strong for us. We proved, without meaning to, how courageous we really are despite the fear of our mortality. We stood by each other. We helped each other. We kept going.
This moment is no different.
Even though it was painful, those hard times taught us something. If we forget those lessons now, if we still doubt the power we carry in our judgment, our attitude, and how we respond to life, all that pain would mean nothing. It’s Marcus reminding us that we’re, “On the verge of dying and still weighed down, still turbulent, still convinced external things can harm us.”
So we have to remember that we’re stronger than we feel, that injustice is also in doing nothing, that we can prepare for the worst without being afraid all the time, and that we should be thankful for the peace we probably do have now—because many don’t. What Marcus Aurelius wrote should reverberate in us louder than ever, “Consider all that you’ve gone through, all that you’ve survived…Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason that arm you today, against the present.”
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This was exactly what I needed today. The reminder that “every disaster that hovers upon us means we return to ourselves” hit like a quiet gong in the chest. It’s easy to forget how much strength we’ve already proven we carry. Thank you for anchoring this moment in something deeper than fear. The words of Marcus feel less like ancient philosophy and more like timely medicine.
These posts are so helpful to me. I have found as I get older I don't worry half as much as I once did but I worry about things that are far more important and valuable to me as a human. Fear once paralyzed me and kept me unhappy and stuck for many years. I no longer allow fear to run my life but must admit this last 6 months concerns me greatly. I needed this reminder. Thank you.