Premeditatio Malorum. As I was looking back to my past in blogging this morning, I thought about the Stoic advice to “Premediatio Malorum”. When we get up every day, we hope that we will have a wonderful day. We hope that we will enjoy it. We hope that the illness, death, tragedy, and losses of the past will not reoccur. However, the Stoics thought that we should always expect that disaster would happen. We might die. Our house might burn down. We might get a diagnosis of serious illness. If we expect the the worst could happen, and it might, we are better prepared to accept it as a natural part of life. Because, one day, we will wake up to our last day on this earth. That day will come, and it is irrational to ignore the possibility. So, go ahead and look back into the past. Just don’t live there. Today is real. The past isn’t anymore.