Who Controls the Weather?

The picnic has been planned for two weeks: the long table at the park and six friends who rarely manage to be in the same place at once. On Sunday morning, the forecast shows an 80 percent chance of rain by two o'clock.

The first instinct is to keep checking the weather app, as if staring at it might move the storm.

Epictetus, who was born a slave and became one of Rome's best-known Stoic teachers, would have said the rain was never yours to manage. He sorted life into two piles: what's up to us, and what isn't. The weather goes in the second pile, along with traffic and other people's opinions. The first pile holds your choices, including what to do when the sky won't cooperate. For a man who spent years as someone else's property, that first pile was the only freedom he had, and he considered it enough.

By noon, the clouds and rain have rolled in. Someone texts the group about moving everything to her place, and the afternoon ends with six friends crowded around a kitchen table, laughing too loud to hear the thunder. Nobody could control the weather, but where to hold the picnic was up to them.