The Next Episode

Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.—Epictetus.

Friday I lost my wallet. Or it may have happened Thursday. When I got dressed to pick up a coffee before work and could not find my wallet in any of its regular hiding spots, I got worried. And when later that day a park ranger did not find a wallet in the lost and found box— the park was the only other place I had been when I had last had my wallet — and I retraced my steps on the trail and didn’t see my army green trifold, I started the perhaps all-too-familiar process of canceling my credit cards and scheduling an appointment at the DMV to get a replacement license.

Throughout I have tried to invoke my inner Stoic. Sure losing a wallet is, mostly, more inconvenience than life-and-death situation, but wallets are still pretty important in the day-to-day world. For example, it’s slightly inconvenient that I now have to bum money off my wife and she may extract a handling fee from my “allowance.” And she too will be inconvenienced next week when she has accompany me to the DMV so she can drive me there and pay for my new license. And, if I can’t get a replacement in time, I may be taking more Ubers than planned on a business trip at the end of the month, my car rental plans upended. Then there’s the biz of updating the card information all of the recurring charges — though, this may be one way to cut down on some of those zombie charges. Admittedly, listing these to-do's make my blood pressure rise a bit, though a couple deep breaths help.

For many of us, becoming frustrated or angry is the natural response to not getting what we want—getting angry is just what we do. Fortunately, an alternative response exists. It is both easy to use and remarkably effective. I call it the Stoic test strategy: when faced with a setback, we should treat it as a test of our resilience and resourcefulness, devised and administered, as I have said, by imaginary Stoic gods. Their goal in throwing these curveballs our way is to make our days not harder but better. — William B. Irvine.

On the Stoic scale, I’d grade my overall response a C/C+ but as Seneca said, “C’s get degrees.” (Purportedly.) I docked myself a couple letter grades because it took more time than I care to admit to get that Ricky Bobby-like voice out of my head (think a screaming Will Ferrell) questioning what kind of person loses their wallet on a hike? (And my voice did not use the word “person.") I got some points back when the inner voice and heart rate returned to more normal levels and I started to work on resolving the problem. And I do give myself a little extra credit for neither freaking out nor really freaking out. Sure I wasn’t a Matthew McConaughey character just simply surfing the waves of life or anything but I didn’t turn into a gangster out of The Sopranos either.

I admit to having a bit of a philosopher-crush on the Stoics, in particular their articulation of our dichotomy (or trichotomy, according to some modern Stoics) of control. There is stuff that is: (a) not in our control; (b) totally in our control; and (c) sort of in our control. Stoic ballers spent most of their time on the latter two categories, in particular category (c), and spent little or no time sweating, what us contract nerds like to call, the force majeures. I don’t want to be a killjoy, but I feel like if there was a pie chart mapping out spans of control, there’d be like a 90% not-in-our-control pizza, a small slice of the things somewhat in our control, and a pepperoni blot of things in our absolute control. So what most in our control? What we do with that pizza slice available to us. (Eat it, duh. It’s pizza.)

Come on and check yo' self before you wrickity-wreck yo' self. — Lyrics, O’Shea Jackson.

Without a wallet, I literally have my mind on my money and my money on my mind and I also know that I have done what I can for today and that I’d be better served to think of other things. Sure I have the occasional flittering thought of somebody using my ID to open a mortgage in my name or buying wine coolers for a fraternity party, but none of that has happened yet and even if it does, it’s out of my control anyways. (Of course the next move is mine if something does happen.) But checking myself before I wreck myself, or my attitude, is always in my control, as long as I make it a point to stop and check myself.

Checking myself, to borrow from a Yankee Stoic, is ninety percent stopping the negative slide and the other half starting to un-wreck myself. As I checked myself and drafted a list of next steps, I wrote down, “Don’t compound unforced errors.” Compounding may be one of the wonders of the world per Einstein but it can work for and against you. It can be all to easy to slip into the reactive state, the me-against-the-world-vibe, that catalytic combustion of displaced time and energy that can ruin your day and the days of others. Cursing the universe for my misfortune doesn’t help fix the situation and probably does more to hurt my mental state than help. (Plus, the universe doesn’t really care anyways.) It helps to shift into a neutral state that the late Mr. Mowad describes in the headline quote.

Whatever happens to us in life, we must aim to keep things net positive. When you have a ?? day, it’s tempting to call it an early night and try to forget about it, but if you go to bed in the red, chances are you’ll wake up that way, and all too often, that type of negativity snowballs. — David Goggins.

On the flip side there is making the countermove, the counterpunch, the next right play: While I love the power of thinking that I can turn lemons into limonada every time, I think that you can spend too much trying stressing about the perfect move. That’s why focusing on just one action to make the situation better, so that over time you start to feel the impact from each accretive improvement, seems more realistic. Trying to get from A to Z can be too much to think about, but getting from A to A’ is usually more doable and the operative word is doing. Perfect is the enemy of good enough and you might be surprised how perfect stringing a bunch of good enoughs together can be.

I also love Mr. Goggin's idea of closing the day net positive. The key word is net. Net captures the plus/minus, profit/loss dynamic that is life. It’s definitely not all wins and I sometimes wonder if batting .300 isn’t just a good average for baseball hitters. But you can always control your effort to finish strong and end even a not-so-hot day plus one.

I've seen 'em come, I've watched 'em go/ Watched 'em rise, witnessed it and watched 'em blow/ Watched 'em all blossom and watched 'em grow/ Watched the lawsuits when they lost the dough. -- Lyrics, Andre Young.

Why my obsession with Stoic guidance? Because if you haven’t noticed, there’s always something trying to disrupt our chill. It’s like universe is has it out for us, but really, it’s just doing its thing, a sort of randomness that’s always aiming towards entropy. And even it does have it out for us, what can we do? Those decisions are way above our pay grade. Worrying about or thinking about things we can’t do anything about displaces valuable time and energy. Interest rates, inflation, strife, pandemics, bank busts, self-created wallet hardships. There will always be a next episode. Always. Checking ourselves, getting to neutral, so that we can slow down long enough find that gap between event and response and control our controllables? That’s at least a constructive something to do with those somethings.

Postscript:

This story ends like I presume most stories about missing wallets end. Given my belief in the general goodness of humankind, I held out hope that a good samaritan would eventually reunite me with my wallet. It turns out, the good samaritan was my wife, who, the next day, found the wallet plopped under a chair. I can hear Seneca docking me a letter grade for failing to control the most controllable of my actions: "SMH, I thought you said you looked everywhere." So while I might not have passed my Stoic test with flying colors, at least I don't have to go to the DMV this week.

Please note that the opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone and do not represent the opinions of and are definitely not endorsed by my employer Raymond James. Thanks!