Seneca: It is your trouble, Marcia, which has been dealt…

Sometimes the advice we give someone else is the advice we most need to hear. It is easy to sit beside another person's pain with patience and perspective, then deny both to ourselves when the same loss arrives. Seneca turns the consoling voice back toward the reader: change the names, and the lesson is yours. This is a useful exercise whenever self-pity or panic takes over. Imagine a good friend facing your exact problem. What would you tell them? You would probably not call them doomed because of one rejection, one bad quarter, or one painful loss. You would remind them of their strength and the fact that life is still larger than this moment. Offer yourself that same fair-minded counsel. Compassion is not less true because its recipient is you.