Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome) [40]
26. The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh—gentle and violent ones alike. Not mingling with them, but fencing itself off and keeping those feelings in their place. When they make their way into your thoughts, through the sympathetic link between mind and body, don’t try to resist the sensation. The sensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in with judgments, calling it “good” or “bad.”
27. “To live with the gods.” And to do that is to show them that your soul accepts what it is given and does what the spirit requires—the spirit God gave each of us to lead and guide us, a fragment of himself. Which is our mind, our logos.
28. Don’t be irritated at people’s smell or bad breath. What’s the point? With that mouth, with those armpits, they’re going to produce that odor.
—But they have a brain! Can’t they figure it out? Can’t they recognize the problem?
So you have a brain as well. Good for you. Then use your logic to awaken his. Show him. Make him realize it. If he’ll listen, then you’ll have solved the problem. Without anger.
28a. Neither player-king nor prostitute.
29. You can live here as you expect to live there.
And if they won’t let you, you can depart life now and forfeit nothing. If the smoke makes me cough, I can leave. What’s so hard about that?
Until things reach that point, I’m free. No one can keep me from doing what I want. And I want what is proper to rational beings, living together.
30. The world’s intelligence is not selfish.
It created lower things for the sake of higher ones, and attuned the higher ones to one another. Look how it subordinates, how it connects, how it assigns each thing what each deserves, and brings the better things into alignment.
31. How have you behaved to the gods, to your parents, to your siblings, to your wife, to your children, to your teachers, to your nurses, to your friends, to your relatives, to your slaves? Have they all had from you nothing “wrong and unworthy, either word or deed”?
Consider all that you’ve gone through, all that you’ve survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete. How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?
32. Why do other souls—unskilled, untrained—disturb the soul with skill and understanding?
—And which is that?
The one that knows the beginning and the end, and knows the logos that runs through all things and that assigns to all a place, each in its allotted span, throughout the whole of time.
33. Soon you’ll be ashes, or bones. A mere name, at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial. Dogs snarling at each other. Quarreling children—laughing and then bursting into tears a moment later. Trust, shame, justice, truth—“gone from the earth and only found in heaven.”
Why are you still here? Sensory objects are shifting and unstable; our senses dim and easily deceived; the soul itself a decoction of the blood; fame in a world like this is worthless.
—And so?
Wait for it patiently—annihilation or metamorphosis.
—And until that time comes—what?
Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control.
34. You can lead an untroubled life provided you can grow, can think and act systematically.
Two characteristics shared by gods and men (and every rational creature):
i. Not to let others hold you back.
ii. To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that.
35. If:
• this evil is not of my doing,
• nor the result of it,
• and the community is not endangered, why should it bother me?
Where's the danger for the community?
36. Not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just do what you can and