Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Lessons from Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Inspired by Mark Larson’s yearly New Year’s re-read, I re-read Meditations yesterday. Here’s what I said last time I read it, and here are my top ten highlights from the first read:
Uncomplicate yourself.
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?”
The things you think about determine the quality of your thoughts.
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.
It’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that.
People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now.
Get a move on—if you have it in you—and don’t worry about whether anyone will give you credit for it. And don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic; be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it as unimportant.
To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.
As you kiss your son good night, says Epictetus, whisper to yourself, “He may be dead in the morning.”
Everything’s destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish. So that new things can be born.
This time around, I was most struck by his thoughts on fame and legacy — how fleeting praise and applause, etc. — and the importance of going inwards, finding intrinsic value in your work, doing your job. Good reminders for our “please follow back” and “Like Me On Facebook!” age.
Ten more highlights from my second read: 1. “Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.” (3.10)
- “Keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment—” (3.12)
3. “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 want. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.” (4.3)
“Is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us—how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space—and most of it uninhabited.” (4.3)
“To pass through this brief life… Like an olive that ripens and falls… thanking the tree it grew on.” (4.48)
“The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial…. Fame in a world like this is worthless.” (5.33)
“What is it in ourselves that we should prize? […] An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues… So we throw out other people’s recognition. What’s left for us to prize? I think it’s this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That’s the goal of all the trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do… And if you can’t stop prizing a lot of other things? Then you’ll never be free—free independent, imperturbable. Because you’ll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you.” (6.16)
“The way people behave. They refuse to admire their contemporaries, the people whose lives they share. No, but to be admired by Posterity—people they’ve never met and never will—that’s what they set their hearts on. You might as well be upset at not being a hero to your great-grandfather.” (6.18)
“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.” (6.51)
“Kindness is invincible, provided it’s sincere.” (11.18)