Rooting Out Dejection

This, then, is how we will be able to drive this most harmful passion out of our hearts: by spiritual meditation we keep our mind constantly occupied with the hope of the future and the contemplation of the blessedness that has been promised. For in this way we will be able to get the better of every kind of dejection: the kind that flows from earlier anger, the kind that comes to us from disappointed hopes of gain or from some loss, the kind that springs from a wrong done to us, the kind that arises from an unreasonable disturbance of mind, and the kind that brings a deadly despair on us. We will overcome them all if, always joyful with insight into things eternal and things to come, and remaining unmoved, we are neither cast down by what happens to us now nor carried away by prosperity, but look on each condition as uncertain and soon to pass away.