The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

Events arrive without asking, and much of what reaches you was never yours to choose. What is yours is the interpretation you lay over it in the first hour, and that often decides more than the event did. Two people can lose the same job, and one is undone for a year while the other is not. This is not about pretending hardship is secretly a gift. It is about noticing how much of the weight sits in the handling.

When something goes wrong this week, wait before deciding what it means. Say what happened in plain terms first, then look at the story you added on top.