Whenever you find yourself blaming providence, turn it around in your mind and you will see that what has happened is in keeping with reason.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 3.17.1
Part of the reason we fight against the things that happen is that we’re so focused on our plan that we forget that there might be a bigger plan we don’t know about. Is it not the case that plenty of times something we thought was a disaster turned out to be, with the passage of time, a lucky break? We also forget that we’re not the only person who matter and that our loss might be someone else’s gain.
This sense of being wronged is a simple awareness problem. We need to remember that all things are guided by reason—but that it is a vast and universal reason that we cannot always see. That the surprise hurricane was the result of a butterfly flapping its wings a hemisphere away or that misfortune we have experienced is simply the prelude to a pleasant and enviable future.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman