Love what you actually got

You clock in and it's already wrong. The good section went to someone else, the truck came in short, the kid was up half the night and now you're running on fumes. Part of you spends the next hour somewhere else — in the better shift, the better job, the life where this wasn't happening to you. Meanwhile the actual shift goes on without you in it.

Marcus, who ran an empire he didn't ask for, kept aiming himself back: "Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny" (Meditations 7.57, Long). Not approve of it, not call it fair. Love it the way you love your own life — because it is your own life, the only one being handed to you, thread by thread, this morning.

This is the last move of the year, and it's the hardest one to fake. Wisdom saw the day clearly. Justice dealt squarely. Courage stood. Temperance held the line. All of it was practice for this: meeting the work you actually have, not the one you keep wishing in.

The wished-for shift never arrives. The real one is already here, waiting for you to show up to it.