Meet what's coming

Look at how much of a shift you spend braced against what's next. The dread before the difficult customer. The clench before the manager's review. The way your shoulders climb on the drive in, before anything has even happened. You meet the day flinching, as if the next hour were an ambush instead of just the next hour.

Marcus saw the world differently — not as a thing out to get him but as a thing always making the next thing: "the universe loves to make whatever is about to be" (Meditations 10.21, Long). What's coming isn't an accident the world is sorry for. It's what the world does. The next ticket, the next patient, the next mile, the next mess on the floor — all of it the same steady making, and you're part of what it's making too.

You don't have to like the difficult customer. You do get to stop dreading the entire shift waiting for one. Meet what's coming as it comes, and the bracing drops away. It was never doing any work anyway.

This is loving what happens, pointed forward: not just accepting what landed, but turning toward what's arriving.