The trick in life is learning how to deal with it.

“The trick in life is learning how to deal with it.” — Helen Mirren

Simple though these words may seem, they carry within them the calm strength of a lifetime’s understanding. Helen Mirren, a woman who has walked through both triumph and trial, offers this statement not as a jest, but as a distilled truth — the essence of wisdom gained through living. Life, she tells us, will not bow to our desires. It will test, provoke, and humble us. The trick — that secret art of survival and serenity — lies not in avoiding life’s blows, but in learning to face them with grace. Her words remind us of an ancient truth: the measure of a person is not in what they endure, but in how they endure it.

To learn how to deal with life is to understand that existence is both storm and calm, joy and sorrow. The ancients knew this well; they called it fortitudo animi — the strength of the soul. Stoics like Marcus Aurelius spoke of it as the discipline of the spirit, the art of responding to fate without bitterness. He wrote, “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” This is the same wisdom that beats within Mirren’s words. We cannot always control what happens, but we can learn to deal with it, to transform the unpredictable flow of life into a teacher rather than a tormentor.

Consider the story of Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who survived the concentration camps of the Second World War. Stripped of freedom, possessions, and family, he found that all external control had been taken from him — except one thing: his attitude toward his suffering. In that crucible of despair, he discovered his greatest insight — that between what happens to us and how we respond, there is a choice, and in that choice lies our humanity. Frankl did not say that life was easy or fair; he learned, as Mirren expresses, how to deal with it, how to endure without surrendering the soul. His story stands as a torch for all who face darkness.

Mirren’s wisdom, like Frankl’s, is not born of theory but of experience. It is the quiet, unglamorous knowledge that comes only after years of struggle, of heartbreak, of learning and unlearning. Life is not a puzzle to be solved, but a rhythm to be understood. The trick lies in learning its cadence — when to fight and when to yield, when to speak and when to listen, when to act and when to let time work its healing. To deal with life means to dance with it: to move through its pain without being broken, and through its beauty without clinging.

There is humility in this teaching. The one who seeks to master life will always be defeated, for life cannot be mastered — only met. The rivers of existence are vast and uncontrollable, but the one who learns to navigate their currents will not drown. The Stoics, the Buddhists, and the mystics of every tradition all whisper the same lesson: accept what comes, and act with wisdom. To resist what is, is to suffer twice — once from the event, and again from our refusal to accept it. To deal with life, however, is to make peace with imperfection, and to discover strength in surrender.

And yet, Mirren’s words are not an invitation to passivity. To deal with life does not mean to drift aimlessly or to resign oneself to fate. It means to live consciously, to meet each challenge with understanding, and to seek the lesson hidden within hardship. Life will test you — through loss, through failure, through change — but each test is also a teacher. The wise learn to see that every obstacle carries a gift: patience, humility, endurance, clarity. The trick, then, is not to avoid struggle, but to let struggle refine you.

So, dear listener, take this truth into your heart: life will not always be kind, nor predictable, nor just. It will bring days of laughter and nights of sorrow. But you, too, can learn the trick — to breathe, to adapt, to rise again. When anger comes, meet it with calm. When fear comes, meet it with courage. When loss comes, meet it with gratitude for what was. In learning how to deal with life, you do not escape its storms — you learn to sail through them. And in that steady sailing lies the deepest kind of peace — the peace of one who no longer fights the waves, but moves with them, strong, wise, and free.