240204 What I learned in my studies this morning 4

Today's Meditation(s):

I feel poorly today. Lack of sleep. A new medication. Stress from all the usual sources (money, people, the future, work, etc.) + my dad's dying.

Lacking sufficient sagacity, these things distress me.

But I work on it.

Others have suffered far worse than this and done so nobly. So there is a way, I just need to find it.

Ten years from now, I'll look back on these trials and wonder what at the anxiety I experienced. They are bearable, so I must have borne them. I must have found the way, even if it were as sedentary as simply outwaiting the discomfort.

Similarly, in the Big Picture, my concerns are picayune. Other people are facing cancers and war and trauma and starvation. Since this isn't the 'who's hurt worse' Olympics, I'm not saying that my worries don't count. I'm saying that mine are all handle-able issues.

'He who has only my troubles is fortunate indeed.' (I cannot find a source for this, though I know I read it somewhere.)

I know all of these things are external and not up to me. Fate wills it so, my wishes be damned. 

Mine is to choose how I act, to what do I consent.

Time to be better.