The Obstacle Is the Way

Our actions may be impeded ... but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up.

The one thing to guarantee we don't benefit from failure – to ensure it is a bad thing – is to not learn from it.

Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. There are a lot of ways to get from point A to point B. It doesn’t have to be a straight line. It’s just got to get you where you need to go. But so many of us spend so much time looking for the perfect solution that we pass up what’s right in front of us.

Persist and resist. Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.

Some things are bigger than us. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Because we can turn that obstacle upside down too, simply by using it as an opportunity to practice some other virtue or skill – even if it is just learning to accept that bad things happen, or practicing humility.

"This too shall pass" was Lincoln's favorite saying, one he said was applicable in any and every situation one could encounter.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it ... but love it. –Friedrich Nietzsche

Also see: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.