always good material....................

68.  Live out your days in untroubled serenity, refusing to be coerced though the whole world deafens you with its demands, and though wild beasts rend piecemeal this poor envelope of clay.  In all that, nothing can prevent the mind from possessing itself in peace, from correctly assessing the events around it, and from making prompt use of the material thus offered;  so that judgment may say to the event, "This is what you are in essence,  no matter how rumour paints you," and service may say to the opportunity, "You are what I was looking for."   The occurrence of the moment is always good material for the employment of reason and brotherliness - in a word, for the practice proper to men or gods.  For not a thing ever happens but has its special pertinence to god or man;  it arrives as no novel intractable problem, but as an old and serviceable friend.

-Marcus Aurelius,   Meditations,  Book VII