My introduction to Stoicism began many years ago and without knowledge of what I was doing.

It happened after I got married… I noticed that I was getting upset when, after we’d agreed to do something together, K would change her mind at the last minute. Since these agreements were about trivial things (like going to a movie or the zoo), she didn’t feel obliged to stick to them. I, on the other hand, would become furious.

I have never won an argument with K. And I have always regretted any complaint I voiced against her. Thus, these silent rages I would get myself into each time she changed her mind were doing nothing but eating me up.

One day – and I don’t know what provoked it – I woke up with a solution. From then on, every time we agreed to do something, I would take a few moments to vividly imagine K cancelling at the last minute and then vividly imagine me feeling okay about it. Sometimes I even went so far as to imagine something else, something fun, that I’d do instead.

It worked like a charm. And it’s been working perfectly ever since.

At the time, I thought of it merely as a personal strategy to manage my marriage. Since then, I see it in larger terms: about accepting the universe for what it is and not trying to force my will upon it.

All of which brings me to thoughts I had while recently re-reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations…