So much of the time, what is standing between us and satisfaction is … us. This isn’t to say we control whether we get that promotion, or how our kids are going to act, or if a relationship is going to work out. Nor is it saying that things like that are not important. It’s saying that we can control how much we’re controlled by things outside ourselves. So the first goal, as the first-century Stoic philosopher Agrippinus put it, is not to be “a hindrance to myself.” Or, in the classic comic strip Pogo’s famous turn of phrase, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”
