I was shipwrecked before I got aboard.

The line is typically taken as a paradox about misfortune arriving before one even begins an undertaking: a person can be “ruined” in spirit, reputation, or prospects in advance of the decisive moment, as if the disaster precedes the voyage. Read in a Stoic key, it underscores how fear, anticipation, and mental surrender can do the work of calamity without any external blow. It can also gesture toward the fragility of human plans—how circumstances (political, financial, bodily) may already have undermined us before we step into the arena. The aphorism’s sting lies in its compression: it turns “shipwreck” into a metaphor for pre-emptive defeat.