How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

by Donald J. Robertson

By “worry” they mean something quite specific: an anxious process exhibiting a particular style of thinking. Worried thinking is perseverative—it goes on and on. It tends to involve “What if?” thoughts about feared catastrophes: “What if they get so angry they fire me? What if I can’t get another job? How will I pay for my kids’ college?” These questions often feel as if they’re unanswerable. One just leads to another, in a chain reaction, which goes on and on, fueling anxiety. Severe worrying can often feel out of control, but, perhaps surprisingly, it’s actually a relatively conscious and voluntary type of thinking.

Chrysippus reputedly said that with the passage of time, “emotional inflammation abates” and as reason returns, finding room to function properly, it can then expose the irrational nature of our passions.

We should not meet disagreeable people and enemies with anger, but treat this as an opportunity to exercise our own wisdom and virtue. Stoics think of troublesome people as if they are a prescription from a physician, or a training partner we’ve been assigned by a wrestling coach. We exist for one another, says Marcus, and if we can’t educate those who oppose us, we have to learn at least to tolerate them.6 These challenges will help us grow in virtue and become more resilient.

He actually recommends that whenever we’re offended by the faults of another, we should treat it as a signal to pause

and immediately turn our attention to our own character, reflecting on the similar ways in which we go wrong.

Marcus says we should speak to them delicately, reminding them that human beings are meant to live together in society, like bees and other communal animals, and not to be at odds with each other. We should not speak sarcastically or include harsh rebukes but rather reply with affectionate kindness in our hearts. We should be simple and honest and not lecture them as though from a schoolmaster’s chair or as though trying to impress bystanders.

to expect bad people not to do bad things is madness because that is wishing for the impossible. Moreover, to accept their wrongdoing toward others while expecting them never to wrong you is both inconsiderate and foolish.

Wishing bad men never to do wrong is as foolish as wishing that babies would never cry and becoming angry with them when they do.

I lived each day as if it were to be my last, preparing myself for this very moment. Now that it’s finally upon me, I realize it’s just the same as every other moment. I have the choice to

die well or die badly. Philosophy has prepared me well enough.

Before me now a mental image forms: the representation of a shining sphere enclosing all creation, each part distinct but nevertheless one, gathered into a single vision. All the stars of the heavens, the sun, the moon, our earth, both land and sea, and all living creatures, just as though seen within a transparent globe, which I can almost imagine holding in the palm of my hand. From this cosmic perspective, in truth, to rail against the universe in fury over all the troubles in history would be like weeping over a cut on my smallest finger.

What I spent my life learning I now see everywhere—as I turn my attention from one thing to another, all sides grant me the same vision. The universe is a single living being, with a single body and a single consciousness. Every individual mind a tiny particle of one great mind. Each living creature like a limb or organ of one great body, working together, whether they realize it or not, to bring about events in accord with one great impulse. Everything in the universe so intricately woven together, forming a single fabric and chain of events. Whereas I once saw each fragmentary part and with some effort imagined the whole, my sight is now transformed. Having let go of fear and desire forever, I can see only the whole to which every part belongs, and this appears more real to me than anything else. What I knew before, my life and opinions, seem like smoke through which I glimpsed Nature darkly.

The more confidently I grasp this vision, the more clearly I understand that nothing is of any great moment in life except that we should do two simple things: First we must follow the guidance of our own higher nature, submitting ourselves to reason’s dictates. Second, we must deal wisely and dispassionately with whatever universal Nature sends to be our fate, whether pleasure or pain, praise or censure, life or death.

Man was meant to be like this: striving his whole life with patient endurance to cultivate the pure light of wisdom within himself and allowing it to shine forth for the benefit of others. Alone and yet at one with the community of fellow men around him, living wisely and in concord with them.

Pure wisdom like the blazing fire of a sun consumes anything cast into it and burns brighter still. Reason adapts itself to any obstacle if it’s allowed to, finding the right virtue with which to respond.

And philosophy consists in this: for a man to preserve that inner genius or divine spark within him from violence and injuries, and above all from harmful pains or pleasures; never to do anything either without purpose, or falsely, or hypocritically, regardless of the actions or inaction of others; to contentedly embrace all things that happen to him, as coming from the same source from whom he came himself, and above all things, with humility and calm cheerfulness, to anticipate death as being nothing else but the dissolution of those elements of which every living being is composed.