Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation; our next Reading & the Good Life (weekly meetup) is on Friday (20 Jan at Noon EST). January’s theme is Stoic Meditations for Modern Living (Register here). We are continuing the exploration of 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:
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
—But it’s nicer here.… So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? […]
— Meditations, 5.1
—
Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold? […]
— Meditations, 6.15
—
The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all. And before long you’ll be no one, nowhere—like Hadrian, like Augustus. The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.
— Meditations, 8.5
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.
12 Short Reminders from Marcus Aurelius
“What injures the hive injures the bee.”
“Nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure.”
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”
“To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.”
“Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense.”
“Learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.”
“Don’t be overheard complaining about life. Not even to yourself.”
“To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference.”
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
“The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it.”
“Give yourself a gift: the present moment.”
“You have a mind? —Yes. Well, why not use it?”
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, there is still time to register for the free Wisdom 101 Course on The Timeless Art of Leading a Life (Learn more and sign up here).