Just a thought… When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane. [Hermann Hesse]

In one week I’ll mark six years of sobriety. We call it a “birthday” and it means that I’m past the halfway point of the longest period of not drinking that I accomplished (10 years) before I dove right back in upon retirement. Thankfully in 2019 I found my way into the arms of supportive and loving people who’ve been at this far longer than I. So it’s with that in mind that I wrote to my sister Leslie yesterday: “When do we know if this really is WWIII? Because I’d like to start chilling the gin.”

It was a joke. And we all have our crutches to help us get through the most anxious of times. Another, of course, is falling back on belief systems that have carried us in the past. Most of us haven’t been through periods like these; few remember the “duck and cover” exercises that we’ve seen in grainy reels from the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the existential threats of nuclear war that existed even then. We’ve lived blessedly peaceful lives, most of us; others escaped from war-torn countries to find this cushion of tranquility inside our borders and were welcomed here.

Now we look within, and it’s from that place of gentle wisdom accrued over millennia that I share a little today.

Thank you to my podcast partner and longtime friend Lisa Brandt for introducing me to stoicism, as she’s talked me off a ledge more than once when I was anxious about issues over which I had no control (and only thought I did). It’s also one of the best things I learned in rehab six years ago: you were CEO of your life and you effed that up, so it’s time to hand it over to a higher power.

I’m not going into the whole HP thing here; you do whatever gets you through the night.

So I’m sharing with you a good post gleaned from the stoics – a group of men whose names you’ve probably heard who lived many centuries ago, some of whom were rich leaders, others who were enslaved – from @dailystoic Ryan Holiday who is an excellent follow on social media.

Many of these also bring me to Mel Robbins’ massively popular bestseller The Let Them Theory. I read and listened to it over the winter and it fundamentally shifted the way I was looking at my life: it lessened my suffering over circumstances that had not turned out the way I’d hoped. And not just the BIG things like death, but the little things, too.

Now some have called out Mel’s writing, asking if it came from someone else’s work. I have considered that dilemma greatly over the past few months and my response to my own question of whether I can trust her writing and my instincts is that most of these ideas came from stoicism, Buddhism, Biblical scholars, etc.. The fact that she was able to compile these messages, this wisdom, into something easily accessible and digestible for our turbulent times still makes it well worthwhile.

Do what you need to to get through what’s happening and what’s ahead. Take gratitude in knowing that our country is helmed by a calm, intelligent and worldly individual who has our best interests at heart. Know that being Canadian is an enviable position for many in this world today. And please, take it easy on yourself.

Don’t argue online when you don’t know who’s on the other end; you can’t change minds, especially when they’re just bots with zero followers. Shut off the news when you need to. Quiet the discourse. Don’t self-medicate. Go inside (literally and figuratively) when you can. Find a good meditation app and listen to it. It can be for five minutes a day and you don’t have to hang upside down in the dark. Just do what’s best to keep your sanity, helping those around you with theirs.

Control what you can and let go of the rest…or at least try, my friend.