Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome) [53]
39. “To the best of my judgment, when I look at the human character I see no virtue placed there to counter justice. But I see one to counter pleasure: self-control.”
40. Stop perceiving the pain you imagine and you’ll remain completely unaffected.
—“You?”
Your logos.
—But I’m not just logos.
Fine. Just don’t let the logos be injured. If anything else is, let it decide that for itself.
41. For animate beings, “harmful” is whatever obstructs the operation of their senses—or the fulfillment of what they intend. Similar obstructions constitute harm to plants. So too for rational creatures, anything that obstructs the operation of the mind is harmful.
Apply this to yourself.
Do pain and pleasure have their hooks in you? Let the senses deal with it. Are there obstacles to your action? If you failed to reckon with the possibility, then that would harm you, as a rational being. But if you use common sense, you haven’t been harmed or even obstructed. No one can obstruct the operations of the mind. Nothing can get at them—not fire or steel, not tyrants, not abuse—nothing. As long as it’s “a sphere . . . in perfect stillness.”
42. I have no right to do myself an injury. Have I ever injured anyone else if I could avoid it?
43. People find pleasure in different ways. I find it in keeping my mind clear. In not turning away from people or the things that happen to them. In accepting and welcoming everything I see. In treating each thing as it deserves.
44. Give yourself a gift: the present moment.
People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say x about you, or think y?
45. Lift me up and hurl me. Wherever you will. My spirit will be gracious to me there—gracious and satisfied—as long as its existence and actions match its nature.
Is there any reason why my soul should suffer and be degraded—miserable, tense, huddled, frightened? How could there be?
46. What humans experience is part of human experience. The experience of the ox is part of the experience of oxen, as the vine’s is of the vine, and the stone’s what is proper to stones.
Nothing that can happen is unusual or unnatural, and there’s no sense in complaining. Nature does not make us endure the unendurable.
47. External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.
If the problem is something in your own character, who’s stopping you from setting your mind straight?
And if it’s that you’re not doing something you think you should be, why not just do it?
—But there are insuperable obstacles.
Then it’s not a problem. The cause of your inaction lies outside you.
—But how can I go on living with that undone?
Then depart, with a good conscience, as if you’d done it, embracing the obstacles too.
48. Remember that when it withdraws into itself and finds contentment there, the mind is invulnerable. It does nothing against its will, even if its resistance is irrational. And if its judgment is deliberate and grounded in logic . . . ?
The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. Not to see this is ignorance. To see it and not seek safety means misery.
49. Nothing but what you get from first impressions. That someone has insulted you, for instance. That—but not that it’s done you any harm. The fact that my son is sick—that I can see. But “that he might die of it,” no. Stick with first impressions. Don’t extrapolate. And nothing can happen to you.
Or extrapolate. From a knowledge of all that can happen in the world.
50. The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out.
There are brambles in the path? Then go around them.
That’s all you need to know. Nothing more. Don’t demand to know “why such things exist.” Anyone who understands the world will laugh at you, just as a carpenter would if you seemed shocked at finding sawdust in his workshop, or a shoemaker at scraps of leather left over from work.
Of course, they have a place