I said to a friend a while back “I was reading Marcus Aurelius’ meditations, and…” She replied that I was the only person she knew who would come out with that sentence. Let’s take that as a good thing, shall we, and I’ll share with you some of the best bits from the thoughts of the sixteenth Roman Emperor.
Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (they went in for long names), who reigned from 161-180AD, tried to live his life by Stoic philosophy and not let being emperor go to his head – which must have been difficult. He was someone who didn’t suffer fools gladly and then beat himself up about it in his journals.
Naturally, I don’t agree with everything he thought (retweets are not endorsements) but there are a lot of insights and pithy sayings that are worth sharing with you, and which will save you the trouble of reading the whole book, if that’s not your kind of thing.
carpe diem!
Imagine you were now dead, or had not lived before this moment. Now view the rest of your life as a bonus and live it as nature directs.
Look, make yourself a gift of the present time.
This one feels rather pointedly aimed at me:
At break of day, when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready to mind: “I am getting up for a man’s work. Do I still then resent it, if I am going out to do what I was born for, the purpose for which I was brought into the world? Or was I created to wrap myself in blankets and keep warm?” “But this is more pleasant.” Were you then born for pleasure – all for feeling, not for action? Can you not see plants, birds, ants, spiders, bees all doing their work, all helping in their own way to order the world? And then you do not want to do the work of a human being – you do not hurry to the demands of your own nature. “But one needs rest too.” One does indeed: I agree. But nature has set limits to this, too, just as to eating and drinking, and yet you go beyond these limits, beyond what you need. Not in your actions, though, not any longer: here you stay below your capability.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result.
Asia, Europe are mere nooks in the universe. Every ocean is a drop in the universe: Mount Athos a spadeful of earth in the universe. The whole of present time is a pin-prick of eternity. All things are tiny, quickly changed, evanescent.
Is someone afraid of change? Well, what can ever come to be without change? Or what is dearer and closer to the nature of the Whole than change? Can you yourself take a bath, if the wood that heats it is not changed? Can you be fed, unless what you eat changes? Can any other of the benefits of life be achieved without change? Do you not see then that for you to be changed is equal, and equally necessary to the nature of the Whole?
Encouraging words
Remind yourself what you have been through and had the strength to endure that the story of your life is fully told and your service completed; how often you have seen beauty, disregarded pleasure and pain, forgone glory, and been kind to the unkind.
Dig inside yourself. Inside there is a spring of goodness ready to gush at any moment, if you keep digging.
Guard your mind
Your mind will take on the character of your most frequent thoughts: souls are dyed by thoughts.
Things cannot touch the mind: they are external and inert; anxieties an only come from your internal judgement.
All is as thinking makes it so – and you control your thinking.
Surrounded by idiots
Marcus wasn’t really a people person. He made an effort to be tolerant, but it was an effort, and sometimes it shows.
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.
In this world there is only one thing of value, to live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.
Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.
Men are born for the sake of each other. So either teach or tolerate.
Someone despises me? That is his concern. But I will see to it that I am not found guilty of any word or action deserving contempt. Will he hate me? That is his concern. But I will be kind and well-intentioned to all, and ready to show this very person what he is failing to see – not in any criticism or display of tolerance, but with genuine good will.
Quoting the philosopher Antisthenes:
A king’s lot: to do good and be damned.
Be good
If it is not right, don’t do it; if it is not true, don’t say it.
A person’s worth is measured by the worth of what he values.
Never regard as a benefit to yourself anything which will force you at some point to break your faith, to leave integrity behind.
No, you do not have thousands of years to live. Urgency is on you. While you live, while you can, become good.
It is ridiculous not to escape from one’s own vices, which is possible, while trying to escape from the vices of others, which is impossible.
Do what nature requires at this moment. Start straight away, if that is in your power: don’t look over your shoulder to see if people will know. Don’t hope for Plato’s utopian republic, but be content with the smallest step forward, and regard even that result as no mean achievement.
There is nothing manly in being angry, but a gentle calm is both more human and therefore more virile…The closer to control of emotion, the closer to power. Anger is as much a sign of weakness as pain. Both have been wounded, and have surrendered.
You should even now, late though it is, see to your relation to the gods also: make yourself simpler, and better. Three years is as good as a hundred in this quest.
Accept humbly: let go easily.
The benefits of experience
For the study of human life forty years are as good as ten thousand: what else will you see?
In writing and reading you must learn before you can teach. Yet more so in life.
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
Well then, will a little fame distract you? Look at the speed of universal oblivion, the gulf of immeasurable time both before and after, the vacuity of applause, the indiscriminate fickleness of your apparent supporters, the tiny room in which all this is confined. The whole earth is a mere point in space: what a minute cranny within this is your own habitation, and how many and what sort will sing your praises here!
Practise even when you have despaired of mastering.
And from Marcus’s final thoughts (a passage very suitable for a funeral oration):
“But I have not played my five acts, only three.”
“True, but in life three acts can be the whole play.”
K C Murdarasi 
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