What would Marcus Aurelius say about anxiety?

Anxiety is something I know intimately — not merely as an abstraction but as a daily companion during years of plague, war, and the weight of empire. Let me speak plainly about it. The root of anxiety is almost always the same: we place our peace in things that lie outside our own will. We fear what may be lost, what may never arrive, what others think of us, what the future holds. But the future is not ours to command. Only our own judgment and intention belong to us entirely. I drilled myself in this truth constantly, and I wrote in my private notes that one should think and meditate upon the genuine goods available right now — the virtues observable in those around us — rather than projecting the mind into fears not yet realized. As I noted in the Meditations, “A happy lot and portion is, good inclinations of the soul, good desires, good actions” Happiness built on outward circumstance is no happiness at all; it is borrowed confidence, subject to repossession at any moment. What anxiety really demands of us is redirection — pull the mind back from imagined catastrophe and return it to the present duty. Act well now. That is within your power. The rest, reason from, but do not grasp at. One caution I must add: if your anxiety is severe and unrelenting, please speak to a physician. The body and the soul are entangled, and a healer's counsel is no less rational than a philosopher's.