Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! For January, we are meeting every Friday (at Noon EST) to connect and discuss Stoic Meditations for Modern Living (Register here). Marcus Aurelius’s personal journal (known today as Meditations) has been 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.
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 the problems of everyday life and advice about how to overcome irrationalities that are still relevant today.
Selected passages for this week,
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions. — Meditations, 2.1
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Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work. — Meditations, 2.7
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You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. If the gods exist, then to abandon human beings is not frightening; the gods would never subject you to harm. And if they don’t exist, or don’t care what happens to us, what would be the point of living in a world without gods or Providence? But they do exist, they do care what happens to us, and everything a person needs to avoid real harm they have placed within him. If there were anything harmful on the other side of death, they would have made sure that the ability to avoid it was within you. If it doesn’t harm your character, how can it harm your life? […] — Meditations, 2.11
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.
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.
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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).