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The questions that the Meditations tries to answer are primarily metaphysical and ethical ones: Why are we here? How should we live our lives? How can we ensure that we do what is right? How can we protect ourselves against the stresses and pressures of daily life? How should we deal with pain and misfortune? How can we live with the knowledge that someday we will no longer exist?
The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are.
Chief among these are inappropriate value judgments: the designation as “good” or “evil” of things that in fact are neither good nor evil.
Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error.
the discipline of will governs our attitude to things that are not within our control, those that we have done to us (by others or by nature).
we must see things for what they are (here the discipline of perception is relevant) and accept them, by exercising the discipline of will, or what Epictetus calls (in a phrase quoted by Marcus) “the art of acquiescence.”
we must accept whatever fate has in store for us, however unpleasant it may appear, trusting that, in Alexander Pope’s phrase, “whatever is, is right.”
Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: to accept this event with humility [will]; to treat this person as he should be treated [action]; to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in [perception].
Objective judgment…Unselfish action…Willing acceptance…of all external events.”
To do my own work, mind my own business, and have no time for slanderers.
To praise without bombast; to display expertise without pretension.
Not to be constantly correcting people, and in particular not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage or a grammatical mistake or mispronounce something, but just answer their question or add another example, or debate the issue itself (not their phrasing), or make some other contribution to the discussion—and insert the right expression, unobtrusively.
Self-control and resistance to distractions.
Optimism in adversity—especially illness.
Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
In comparing sins (the way people do) Theophrastus says that the ones committed out of desire are worse than the ones committed out of anger:
