Reading & the Good Life
Our next Reading & the Good Life (weekly meetup) is on Friday (13 Jan) at Noon EST. January’s theme is Stoic Meditations for Modern Living (Register here). Join the conversation as we explore select passages from Marcus Aurelius’s personal journal (known today as Meditations), called one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written.
Reading & the Good Life is a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living.
Selected passages for this week:
If, at some point in your life, you should come across anything better than justice, honesty, self-control, courage—than a mind satisfied that it has succeeded in enabling you to act rationally, and satisfied to accept what’s beyond its control—if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservations—it must be an extraordinary thing indeed—and enjoy it to the full. […]
It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness—as a rational being and a citizen. Anything at all: the applause of the crowd, high office, wealth, or self-indulgence. All of them might seem to be compatible with it—for a while. But suddenly they control us and sweep us away.
— Meditations, 3.6
—
Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.
— Meditations, 3.10
—
People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within.
Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquillity. And by tranquillity I mean a kind of harmony. […]
What’s there to complain about? People’s misbehavior? But take into consideration:
that rational beings exist for one another;
that doing what’s right sometimes requires patience;
that no one does the wrong thing deliberately;
and the number of people who have feuded and envied and hated and fought and died and been buried. […]
“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”
— Meditations, 4.3
Who is Marcus Aurelius?
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121—180) was a Roman emperor and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors. In the Lives of the Stoics, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman write,
At the core of Marcus Aurelius’s power as a philosopher and a philosopher king seems to be a pretty simple exercise that he must have read about in Seneca’s writings and then in Epictetus’s: the morning or evening review. “Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand,” Epictetus had said. “Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.”
So much of what we know about Marcus Aurelius’s philosophical thinking comes from the fact that for years he did that. He was constantly jotting down reminders and aphorisms of Stoic thinking to himself. Indeed, his only known work, Meditations, is filled with quotes […]
The title of Meditations, which dates to 167 AD, means “to himself,” which perfectly captures the book's essence. Holiday and Hanselman explain Meditations is not a book for the reader. It was a book for the author. Yet this is what makes it such an impressive piece of writing, one of the great literary feats of all time. Somehow, in writing exclusively to and for himself, Marcus Aurelius produced a book that has survived through the centuries and is still teaching and helping people today.
What is Stoicism?
The wisest students of human nature in ancient times, and perhaps of all time, were known as the Stoics, writes Ward Farnsworth (author of The Practicing Stoic). But what does it mean to be a Stoic?
Stoicism is an ancient philosophy of life designed to help one live the good life. The Stoics believed the reason to study philosophy was to become a better person in daily life. As Seneca put it in a letter to Lucilius,
No one can live a truly happy life, or even a bearable life, without philosophy; also, while it is complete wisdom that renders a life happy, even to begin that study makes life bearable.
Farnsworth explains that the original Stoics were highly practical philosophers and psychologists; they offered solutions to everyday life's problems and advice about overcoming irrationalities that are still relevant today.
If you are available on a Friday (at Noon EST), feel free to drop into one of our Reading & the Good Life meetups (Register here). It’s an extremely casual space for connection and conversations on the art of living.
—
Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. As a reminder, if you’re interested in starting the year with wisdom. Sign up for the upcoming Wisdom 101 Course (free for Perennial Meditations members). It begins on Monday (16 Jan) and ends Wednesday (15 Feb). The course consists of an email meditation every Monday morning and a live meetup every Wednesday at Noon EST (recorded for those unable to attend).