When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.`
- As if you were dying right now, despise your flesh. Think of yourself as an old man. Do not allow yourself to be a slave or to be driven by selfish impulses—to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.
Let [providence, fortune, and change] suffice thee. Let them be always unto thee, as thy general rules and precepts […] away with [curiosity], that thou die not murmuring and complaining, but truly meek and well satisfied, and from thy heart thankful unto the gods.
- Chance is simply natural. Embrace chance. Embrace things as they are, as they simply strive to keep the world balanced.
- At some point one has to recognize reality as it is. There is a limit to one’s time; time spent is forever gone. Make productive use of time through meaningful labor—something towards a higher goal.
Let it be thy earnest and incessant care to perform whatsoever it is that thou art about with true and unfeigned gravity, natural affection, freedom, and justice, and as for all other cares and imaginations, how thou may ease thy mind of them
- You do not need many things to live a satisfying and reverent life.
Do not commit violence to thyself, for thou hast not long to use self-respect. Life is not long for each, and this life for thee is all but done.
- If one does not keep track of what the soul is doing, then naturally one becomes unhappy.
[Those who are angry] may seem first to have been wronged and so in some manner through grief thereof, have been forced to be angry. Whereas, he who through lust doth commit anything, did of himself merely resolve upon action.
- All pleasure and pain happen to both good and bad people alike. Neither pleasure nor pain are inherently good or bad. Good or bad is to be discerned with one’s intellect, not one’s emotions. Through reasoning, let one realize and understand the things that cause pain and pleasure.
- What cannot harm your character, cannot harm your life. Care not about other people, and realize that one has reverent spirit within themselves. To worship one’s spirit is to keep it from becoming aimless with nature.
Whatsoever thou dost affect, whatsoever thou dost project, so do, and so project all, as one who, for aught thou knowest, may at this very present depart out of this And as for death, if there be any gods, it is no grievous thing to leave the society of men. The gods will do thee no hurt […] but if it be so that there be no gods, or that they take no care of the world, why should I desire to live in a world void of gods, and of all divine providence? But gods there be certainly, and they take care for the world, and as for those things which be truly evil […] such things they have put in a man’s own power that he might avoid them if he would. 1
- Death is simply a process of nature. Death is simply a part of life, no matter how long it is lived. The loss from death for everyone is equal—a brief instant that is experiencing the present, for one does not own and cannot lose the past or the future.
That life which any the longest liver or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose.
- Ways the human soul degrades itself:
- When it secedes from that which is Natural in the world.
- When it sets out to harm others.
- When it is overpowered by pleasure or pain.
- When it puts on a mask and does something artificial.
- When it allows aimless action,, one based more on instinct than rationality.
As a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all things that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion.
- The way to live is to live with philosophy in mind—live rationally, genuinely, and independently. To live accepting death as nothing but a transition to a new state of the body. 2
Links
Footnotes
-
Aurelius argues that life is only worth living because a caring gods exist, otherwise it is meaningless or dreadful. The phrasing of such may come off as odd, but makes more sense when we translate God = Universe as a whole. The Universe in itself is uncaring from a Nihilistic perspective, yet it is also neither good nor evil. ↩
-
Aurelius argues such because “nothing natural is evil”, or more precisely the Universe in and of itself is immoral. Good and evil are human notions, while the Universe simply exists on its own and can continue existing even without humans. ↩