In the midst of what feels like unsurvivable loss, how do we moor ourselves to the fact that even the most beautiful, most singularly gratifying things in life are merely on loan from the universe, granted us for the time being?  Two millennia ago, the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD) argued that the antidote to this gutting grief is found not in hedging ourselves against prospective loss through artificial self-protections but, when loss…

"Blessed is he, who has learned to bear what he cannot change, and to give up with dignity, what he cannot save." Friedrich Schiller