Teach them or bear with them

Here's the hardest place this week lands: the person you can't get away from. The teammate who keeps dropping their end. The boss who never explains. The regular who's curt every single day. You've read them charitably, you've stuck to the visible facts, and they're still difficult. Now what?

Marcus gave himself a clean set of options, and the keystone of the whole week sits in one line: "Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them" (Meditations 8.59, Long). Two doors. Either you can help them see it — a clear word, a shown method, an honest bit of feedback — so teach them. Or you can't, and the situation isn't yours to fix, so bear with them: carry it without the running commentary, the eye-rolls, the nightly rehearsal of grievances.

What's not on the list is the thing most of us actually do — neither teach nor bear, just resent. Stew in silence and call it patience. That third door leads nowhere and costs you the whole shift.

The line counts working people as made for each other, which means the difficult coworker is a colleague to be carried, not an enemy to be endured. The cashier, the plumber, the aide on a double: each gets the same two real doors.