We worry about the future. About who might win an election we’re closely watching. About what some foreign leader might do. About the markets and your portfolio. About the climate. It’s so uncertain, we think, unpredictable and potentially overwhelming.

But is it really?

“If you’ve seen the present,” Marcus Aurelius writes in his own anxious and scary times, “then you’ve seen everything–as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.”

And he’s not wrong. All the things you’re worried about potentially happening in the future are in fact happening right now somewhere in the world. All the things you’re not sure you could handle…people have been handling since the beginning of time. Nothing new looms, only reruns of what you’ve already experienced or read about in the annals of history.

You’ll meet this ‘future,’ Marcus reminds himself, with the same weapons you’ve met everything else in your life with. Whatever is coming, you can handle…because it’s already here, because it’s always been with you.