Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt:  Can I love everything that happens today? 

Finally, we come across an aspect of Stoicism that I have a bit of a problem with.  The header in today’s daily meditation calls it “accepting what is”–that is, not fighting what has happened, but the text goes farther — it talks about loving or feeling gratitude for everything that happens.  I agree fully with the former–because not wishing that a thing happened will not make it go away.  And I realize this is about controlling your reaction, finding the opportunity in misfortune, and all that–again, something I also fully agree with.  But I cannot use the word “love” for this.  Accepting something means accepting that we are human.  Pain happens, and needs to be acknowledged.  And when we’re talking about (waves hands) all this–going on about silver linings that I happen to find–as much as that has helped me–is a sign of privilege.  It is deeply unkind.  There are people out there that do not have that luxury.  And I simply will not embrace anything that arises because of injustice, and I don’t think any true Stoic would, either.  So amor fati — the “love of fate”–must be in dialog with the other Stoic virtues, and it must be balanced.  Otherwise, when practiced to an extreme, it becomes a vice.   

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Sundays are long days, but good days.  Morning at Canadian Warplane Heritage (steady stream of parents with kids, but not excessively busy, bought a new Spitfire hat). Stops on the way home to pick up Coke, chocolate milk for Dave, and top-up groceries.  Played with GIMP to come up with a new Shostakovich embroidery design, figured out how I was going to approach it, and needed to pop back out to Staples to pick up printable transfers for my design.  Got in the Shostakovich quartet du jour (picked the 1st because it was short, and had a blast watching the Jerusalem Quartet guys just bounce through what, in comparison to the 15th, is the epitome of cheerfulness.) Then food, then Pathfinder rpg-ing (finished cleaning out the initial dungeons, leveled up, then spent the last hour figuring out what new stuff to take, although not quite done yet on that).  Now it’s 10 pm and my brain thinks it’s 11 pm because….time change!  (So that’s why I’m yawning!)

We’re now two days out from the US election.  A friend posted yesterday about the shit approaching the fan, and I replied that the shit hit the fan back in 2016–the question is whether it got into the HVAC.   

I joke, but it isn’t really all that funny. But hey, snark is about all I can do right now, since I’m not the praying type.