Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome) [41]
Like the old man asking for the orphan’s toy on the way out—even though he knew that’s all it was. Like that.
36a. † Up on the platform. †
Have you forgotten what’s what?
—I know, but it was important to them.
And so you have to be an idiot as well?
37. I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.
Book 6
1. Nature is pliable, obedient. And the logos that governs it has no reason to do evil. It knows no evil, does none, and causes harm to nothing. It dictates all beginnings and all endings.
2. Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.
Cold or warm.
Tired or well-rested.
Despised or honored.
Dying . . . or busy with other assignments.
Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: “to do what needs doing.”
3. Look inward. Don’t let the true nature or value of anything elude you.
4. Before long, all existing things will be transformed, to rise like smoke (assuming all things become one), or be dispersed in fragments.
5. The logos knows where it stands, and what it has to do, and what it has to work with.
6. The best revenge is not to be like that.
7. To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind.
Only there, delight and stillness.
8. The mind is that which is roused and directed by itself. It makes of itself what it chooses. It makes what it chooses of its own experience.
9. Everything is brought about by nature, not by anything beyond it, or within it, or apart from it.
10. (i) Mixture, interaction, dispersal; or (ii) unity, order, design.
Suppose (i): Why would I want to live in disorder and confusion? Why would I care about anything except the eventual “dust to dust”? And why would I feel any anxiety? Dispersal is certain, whatever I do.
Or suppose (ii): Reverence. Serenity. Faith in the power responsible.
11. When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.
12. If you had a stepmother and a real mother, you would pay your respects to your stepmother, yes . . . but it’s your real mother you’d go home to.
The court . . . and philosophy: Keep returning to it, to rest in its embrace. It’s all that makes the court—and you—endurable.
13. Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love—something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid.
Perceptions like that—latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them.
Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell.
(Compare Crates on Xenocrates.)
14. Things ordinary people are impressed by fall into the categories of things that are held together by simple physics (like stones or wood), or by natural growth (figs, vines, olives . . .). Those admired by more advanced minds are held together by a living soul (flocks of sheep, herds of cows). Still more sophisticated people admire what is guided by a rational mind—not the universal mind, but one admired for its technical knowledge, or for some other skill—or just because it happens to own a lot of slaves.
But those who revere that other mind—the one we all share, as humans and as citizens—aren’t interested in other things. Their focus is on the state of their own minds—to avoid all selfishness and illogic, and to work with others to achieve that goal.