"Does another do me wrong?"

"Does another do me wrong? Let him look to it. He has his own disposition, his own activity. I now have what the universal Nature wills me to have; and I do what my nature now wills me to do."

---Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5 (tr Long)

We have an uncanny ability at flipping the order of Nature over into an order of imaginings. Instead of recognizing that I can find my happiness in what is under my own power, in my own wisdom and virtue, I lash outwards by making my life depend entirely upon the things outside of my power, the thinking and actions of others.

I have too often made myself a victim of the blame game. If I feel that I have been wronged by another, I embrace my impressions of hurt, I dwell upon the injustice, I cast blame. I have allowed myself to be ruled by my resentment. By all means, I must help a man toward the good, but his judgments and actions are his own, and mine are my own. I should worry more about my own words and deeds than I do about his.

What I have long called the "Stoic Turn" is redirecting my own thinking toward the correct balance, from being ruled to ruling myself. It entails seeing everything upside down from the way most of the the rest of the world sees them, though according to Nature they are, of course, right side up.

I think it a beautiful irony, a characteristic I find in Stoicism again and again, that when I meet an injustice with resentment or vengeance, and I try to forcibly change my circumstances, I make everything worse, but when I seek only to make myself better, that very example is the thing most helpful in helping others improve themselves.

Written on 2/16/2010