You're like a pot of water

You messed up. Your best reasoning was overpowered, okay. What’s next? An unnecessarily long trip of pity and shame, where you act out of guilt and rationalize yourself into degeneracy? Why self-destruct?

But I don’t want to deal with this. Things work out so well for others, but I get all the bad luck, so why bother? Those that are doing well… they’re just built differently.

Yes, life is overwhelmingly difficult at times; call it fate, nature, God, or what you will, most likely handed you a rough deck of cards. And yes, a challenging season may bring about emotional turbulence, and overwhelming thoughts, troubling your soul to a point where you’d rather escape, but that’ll only lead you back to square one; spiraling back down to baseline, and you’re tired of being at baseline. So, don’t kid yourself, for you know well that a mistake doesn’t wipe out your knowledge. It is all still there, and all you must do is regain composure by returning to the principles and protocols you know well.

Consider this metaphor:

There’s a pot filled with water, and a light shines upon and through the water. You are the pot, and the water represents your soul, spirit, or essence. The light that shines upon and through the water represents all you know: your good traits: clear judgment, experience, skills, ability to reason, and virtue. When the inevitable blows of life strike you, the waters of your soul are troubled, and it seems as if the light of all you know has distorted as well. But it hasn’t. It is only the water—your soul—that has been troubled, and the light has distorted, but only in perception, for if you shine that light elsewhere, it is as still as ever.

As an example, consider as the light the cardinal virtues: Courage, Wisdom, Justice, Temperance. These may shine upon different bowls of water and may distort in perception in relation to the state of the waters they shine upon, but the rays of light don’t stop being rays of light.

Now, I’m no physics expert to say what’s the real or true form of light and neither was Epictetus, but this analogy has proven helpful to me at times when things become cloudy and confusing, by allowing me to regain my composure quicker and return to the light of the experience, knowledge, values, and virtues that are there all along, waiting for me to return. And if this has been helpful to me, it may also serve you.