From an email received today...

[alexpgp]

I usually have no use for 'bacn' (which I consider as 'spam' you signed up to willingly receive), but I find I do open messages from the Daily Stoic. From today's email:

There are two ways to do math in this life. The one that looks at the odds and says, Why me? and the other that looks at the same odds and thinks, Why me? Why am I so lucky? That’s what Epictetus meant when he said “every situation has two handles.”

We can see all the things that go wrong in the world, all the breaks we didn’t get, all the things we wish went differently. Or we can see how truly fortunate we are to be born here and now in a time of antibiotics and chemotherapy, to have the privilege of even owning a computer to look at this email, to count our blessings and acknowledge how far ahead we have come out so far.

We choose which handle we will grab, which math we will do. And this decision determines the quality of our life, long or short, easy or arduous.

I find the mention of chemotherapy interesting, for without said therapy, I would most certainly have died almost two years ago.

In other aspects, I have to say that my life—both professionally and personally—would have been substantially different, and not necessarily in a good way, without the Internet and search engines.

Never forget: amor fati.

vale