This too shall pass.

The line is old and it was never only a comfort. It was cut into rings to steady kings in victory as much as in defeat.

That double edge is where its weight comes from. If the bad stretch is temporary then so is the ordinary Tuesday you had before it, and so is this afternoon, which is a reason to look up from the floor and out of the window.

On a bad night it can sound like an instruction to sit still and wait it out. It is closer to a plain description of how time behaves, handed along by people who once sat in the chair you are sitting in.