Life is a game of dice

You know what? Sometimes things just do not work out. Sometimes you have a string of days that do not work out. I'm on the tail end of a string of bad days and I won't lie, it got me down a little. I'm only human, right? I try t pracice Arete every day but some days you just have to curl up into a ball and wait it out. Now I'm recovering from my epic curl-up fest, I turn to the ancients for some words of wisdom. That's always soothing to me.

Today's words of wisdom will come from Plato and Plutarch. The subject? Lot. Sometimes things happen because they just happen. There is nothing to be done against it. You have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to it. Thanks Plato, thanks Plutarch. that is what I'll do today.

Plato, Republic 604c-d)

 

“The best way to deliberate about what has happened is just as we might in the fall of dice: to order our affairs in reference to how the dice have fallen where reason dictates the best place would be, and not to stumble forward like children shocked at the outcome wasting time with crying. Instead, we should always prepare our mind towards addressing what has happened as quickly as possible and to redress what has fallen and what ails, erasing lament with treatment (or 'therapy').”

 

Plutarch, De Tranquilitate Animi 467b

 

“Plato likened life to a dice-game in which we need both to throw what is advantageous and to use the dice well after we’ve thrown them. And when we are subject to chance, if we take good advice, this is our task: though we cannot control the toss, we can accept the outcome luck gives us properly and allot to each event a place in which what is good for us helps the most and what was unplanned aggrieves the least.”