Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.19

How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says, or does, or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure.

Or as Agathon says, look not around at the depraved morals of others, but run straight along the line without deviating from it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr Long)

This passage calls to mind something from my childhood. I never understood it at the time, but my parents gave everything of themselves to help make my own life better. I was five years old, and we moved to a new house.

Until that point, we had lived on the top story of what Bostonians call a two-decker, renting from the family who lived below us. It all seemed wonderful to me at that age, but I also remember my mother being yelled at for accidentally flooding the washing machine. I stood there as an older lady cursed cruelly at my mother, the best Irish expletives of all possible sorts, and I watched my mother cry.

Somehow, there was suddenly a different home. The new house was a terrible mess, but it was all my parents could afford. This time they owned it. It was close to where my father worked, but I suspect it was also about the school I would soon be attending. My parents didn’t want me at a public school where stabbings were the norm, but at a public school where at least the appearance of learning was the norm.

The new neighborhood was classier, but it was no less malicious. A while later, when I was first allowed to stay at home alone for a few hours during the day, I overheard a neighbor gossiping with our mailman. It was right outside our open window.

“Look at all the terrible things they’ve done to the house! It was so much nicer when the Urdang’s lived here. That’s what happens when we let in the trash.”

I suddenly realized I was considered trash. Years later, I learned the same thing, when the mother of a girl I loved also told me that I was disposable.

“You’re no good, because you won’t give her any success. I won’t let my daughter marry a waste of life.” That still burns.

I’m not sure if people understand the effect they have when they speak that way. It all boils down to our sense of values. What do we care for? Why do we assume less of others, while also neglecting the dignity within ourselves?

It’s very difficult to try to be a good man, when others tell me that I am trash.

It should then come to mind that what others may think is quite irrelevant. It does not define me.

I am the measure of what I do, not of what others may think or say about me.

Written in 9/2005