Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome) [39]
I was produced through one such transformation, and my parents too, and so on back. Ad infinitum.
N.B.: Still holds good, even if the world goes through recurrent cycles.
14. The logos and its employment are forces sufficient for themselves and for their works. They start from their own beginning, they proceed to the appointed end. We call such activities “directed,” from the directness of their course.
15. Nothing pertains to human beings except what defines us as human. No other things can be demanded of us. They aren’t proper to human nature, nor is it incomplete without them. It follows that they are not our goal, or what helps us reach it—the good. If any of them were proper to us, it would be improper to disdain or resist it. Nor would we admire people who show themselves immune to it. If the things themselves were good, it could hardly be good to give them up. But in reality the more we deny ourselves such things (and things like them)—or are deprived of them involuntarily, even—the better we become.
16. The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. Color it with a run of thoughts like these:
i. Anywhere you can lead your life, you can lead a good one.
—Lives are led at court. . . .
Then good ones can be.
ii. Things gravitate toward what they were intended for.
What things gravitate toward is their goal.
A thing’s goal is what benefits it—its good.
A rational being’s good is unselfishness. What we were born for. That’s nothing new. Remember? Lower things for the sake of higher ones, and higher ones for one another. Things that have consciousness are higher than those that don’t. And those with the logos still higher.
17. It is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so.
18. Nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure. The same thing happens to other people, and they weather it unharmed—out of sheer obliviousness or because they want to display “character.” Is wisdom really so much weaker than ignorance and vanity?
19. Things have no hold on the soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it. It is moved and directed by itself alone. It takes the things before it and interprets them as it sees fit.
20. In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them.
But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us—like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
21. Honor that which is greatest in the world—that on whose business all things are employed and by whom they are governed.
And honor what is greatest in yourself: the part that shares its nature with that power. All things—in you as well—are employed about its business, and your life is governed by it.
22. If it does not harm the community, it does not harm its members.
When you think you’ve been injured, apply this rule: If the community isn’t injured by it, neither am I. And if it is, anger is not the answer. Show the offender where he went wrong.
23. Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see.
So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.
24. Remember:
Matter. How tiny your share of it.
Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it.
Fate. How small a role you play in it.
25. So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not