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January 29 - February 16, 2019
Our opinions torment us more than things themselves,
A favorite Stoic method for the purpose involves viewing a subject in the most literal way possible,
The thought might occur to us, when eating fancy foods, that “this one is the corpse of a fish,
about copulation, that “this is the rubbing of a little piece of entrail and, along with some convulsion, an excretion of mucus.”
we should lay them bare in our minds, perceive their cheapness, and strip off the
Why then does he seem great? Because you are measuring the pedestal along with the man.
you want to take your own measure, put aside your money, your estates, your honors, and look inside yourself. At
present you are taking the word of others for what you are.
“You are just an appearance, and not at all what you appear.” Then examine it, and test it by those rules you have – and by this first one especially, whether it has to do with things that are up to us or things
And if it has to do with something not up to us, let the thought be close at hand that “It is nothing to me.”
or the power to control it but perhaps not the right or responsibility.
withdrawal from the world.
Material things are indifferent;
He can act like people playing a board game.
How can I know what the next throw of the dice will be? But to use the throw carefully and skillfully, this belongs to
External things should be used with care, because their use can be good or bad. But at the same time you should keep your composure and your calm, because the things themselves are neither good nor bad.
we placed it in playing well, in playing fairly, in playing wisely and skillfully; in the propriety of our own conduct in short; we placed it in what, by proper discipline, education, and attention, might be altogether in our own power, and under our own direction. Our happiness was perfectly secure, and beyond the reach of fortune.
These are the two ideas you should keep at the very front of your mind and think about. One is that things in the world do not touch your spirit, but stand quietly external to it; that which disturbs us comes only from the opinions within us. Second, everything you see changes in a moment and will soon be gone. Keep in mind always how many of these changes you have already seen. The world is constant change; your life lies in your opinion. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3.4
The long view is good for morale.
If it is an affront to the ego, it is also an antidote to vanity, ambition, and greed.
Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, the rememberer and the remembered.
The works of nature itself are under attack, so we ought to bear the destruction of cities with equilibrium. They stand but to fall!
whether severity of climate will drive their people away,
All the ways their fate may arrive would be tedious to relate. But this one thing I know: all works of mortals are doomed to mortality.
when even this universe, which has no place to fall, is going to perish;
Now pass ahead to the time of Trajan. It’s all the same things again, and that life too is gone. Carefully view other eras and other nations the same way, and see how many, after strenuous exertion, soon fell and were resolved into the elements.
All this is foul smell and blood in a bag.
is tiresome to go to the theater or other such places and see the same things over and over again; it makes watching them tedious.
It follows that to have observed human life for forty years is the same as for ten thousand. For what more are you going to see?
think of how many don’t know your name at all, how many will quickly forget
Realize that being remembered
has no value, nor does your reputation, nor anyth...
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What else but to venerate and praise the gods, to do good to others, and to treat them with tolerance and restraint; and as for what is within the bounds of your body and your breath, to remember that it is neither yours nor up to you.
Progress in Stoicism, or temperamental aptitude for it, might be measured in part by one’s ability to read the ideas in this chapter and come away in better humor rather than worse, and with greater purpose rather than less. Some would regard Marcus Aurelius as a notably poor motivational speaker. For the Stoic he is among the only kind tolerable.
An external that is frightening makes a natural topic for Stoic analysis, so death gets their attention at length.
Overcoming the fear of death is considered by the Stoics to be one of the most important of all philosophical achievements, and the gain of an important liberty.
Death belongs among those things that are not evils in truth, but still have an appearance of evil;
What we must overcome is not death but the way we think about it.
No good thing makes its possessor happy unless his mind is prepared for its loss; and nothing is easier to let go of than
that which, once gone, cannot be missed.
For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live.
There were some in ancient days so meticulous in the use of their time that they even tried to taste and to savor the moment of their deaths; they bent their faculties of mind to discover what it was to cross over. But they never came back to tell their stories.
But if you will have no sensation, you will feel nothing bad;
Death, the most horrible of evils, is therefore nothing to us – since so long as we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we do not exist.
This, then, is the way of one who is reflective: to be neither careless nor impatient nor arrogant with respect to death, but to
wait for it as one of the operations of nature.
So I won’t exist anymore? No, you won’t – but something else will, which the universe now needs. For you also came into existence not when you chose, but when the world had need of you.
And so to be sorry we will not be alive a hundred years from now is as foolish as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.
the human race, seen accurately, is not the sort of company one should be too sorry to leave behind.
Turn to the habits of those you live with. They are nearly unbearable, even the most accomplished of them; I hesitate to say it, but a man can scarcely bear even himself. In such darkness and filth, then – in such a constantly changing flow of substance and of time, of motion and things moving – what is worth prizing highly or seriously pursuing, I cannot conceive. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.10.1
