Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.

The only way through is through

We live in a culture obsessed with solving problems quickly—finding the life hack, the shortcut, the magic fix. But Virgil's ancient advice points to something we actually know works: sometimes the only way through is through. Bad fortune isn't something you outsmart or negotiate around. You endure it. You show up day after day, even when nothing seems to change, and slowly the weight of it lessens.

This matters most when you're in situations where there's genuinely no escape hatch. A long illness. Financial struggle. Grief. The slow disappointment of unrealized dreams. In these moments, we often waste energy looking for the exit rather than accepting we're going to be here for a while. Once you stop fighting the reality and just... persist, something shifts. Not because the problem magically solves itself, but because you stop being broken by it.

The counterintuitive part is that endurance isn't passive suffering. It's active choice repeated over time. It's the difference between drowning in bad luck and swimming through it. Virgil knew that fortune is temporary. Nothing stays bad forever, but we have to be stubborn enough to see it change.