Hey, it’s Doug.

So I’ve got this quotation printed out on my desk, and it says, being challenged in life is inevitable.

Being defeated is optional.

And it’s by a guy called Roger Crawford.

Now, I don’t know anything other than this quotation by Mr.

Crawford.

Professor Crawford, Dr.

Crawford, I don’t know.

But this quotation has been on my desk for more than a year now.

And on my wall in my office, which I’ve had built this year, and part of the garage in our house, I’ve also got the opening to the Enchiridion by Epictetus.

Now, Enchiridion just means manual.

And it’s so old that actually it was influential for Marcus Aurelius as well.

So when you read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, you read about him being influenced by Epictetus.

So Epictetus was actually a slave who escaped, and he was lame.

And the reason he was lame was because he was beaten really badly by his former owner.

And he ended up creating a school of philosophy.

But that’s an important thing to realize when you listen to the first part of the Enchiridion, the opening part.

So I’m just going to read it.

It says, this is the translation by Elizabeth Carter.

He says, some things are in our control and others not.

Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever are our own actions.

Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

So until this year, when I’ve had some health issues, I didn’t really understand the things not in our control are body, property, reputation, et cetera.

Because how is your body not in your control?

But this year, as I really struggled with, and it’s still an undiagnosed health condition, I realized that your intellectual life, your emotional life, and your physical life can be quite separate.

You know, often when things are going well, it’s difficult to tell the difference between them.

But when things aren’t going so well, intellectually, everything can be fine.

Emotionally, you can be all over the place.

And then physically, you can be really struggling.

So yeah, this year, I’ve got some kind of exercise intolerance thing going on until literally January the 15th this year.

I was running three times a week, going to the gym three times a week, really fit.

Some of the fittest I’d been in my life.

My fitness age, Garmin told me, my Garmin smartwatch told me, was 10 years at least younger than what I was.

No, not so much.

So these two quotations, the opening of the Enchiridion, like talking about what’s in our control and what’s not in control, that’s quite a liberating thing.

And then the Roger Crawford quotation, that being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.

It just reminds us that everyone’s going through stuff and we should expect these things.

We should expect that we’re gonna be challenged and that we’re gonna come through the other side at some point.

It doesn’t always feel like that.

It hasn’t felt like that recently.

I’ve been really struggling with anxiety, with this physical condition, still undiagnosed, really limiting some of the stuff I can do.

But I can still sit here.

I can talk to you.

I can do my work, sitting at my desk.

And I can still love and care for the people who are important to me in my life.

So I’m just gonna remember these two quotations and I’ve got them next to me.

And I think having quotations next to where you work are really important.

And maybe next time I’ll talk about inappropriate guidelines for unacceptable behavior.

But for now, I’m gonna leave you with Roger Crawford and Epictetus.