Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.36

Do not be carried along inconsiderately by the appearance of things, but give help to all according to your ability and their fitness.

And if they should have sustained loss in matters that are indifferent, do not imagine this to be a damage. For it is a bad habit. But as the old man, when he went away, asked back for his foster-child's toy top, remembering that it was just a top, so do you in this case also.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5 (tr Long)

The seriousness of my care for something will rise or fall with how important I truly think it to be in the order of things. A man who places money first in his priorities will commit all his attention to acquiring and preserving his wealth. A man who places his character first in his priorities will commit all his attention to acquiring and preserving his virtue. He will have very little concern about whether he is rich or poor, but he will have great concern about whether he is good or bad.

When he sees the seeker of truth, the seeker of riches will be quite confused. Why, he asks himself, is this fool strolling past all these wonderful opportunities to possess more? Why would he treat money as such an insignificant thing? So the genuine philosophers, and the Stoic philosophers especially, appear to the world as men gone insane.

Life will throw all sorts of impressions my way, offering many appearances of worth. I must learn to judge these things critically, and to recognize that an appearance is only what something seems like for the moment. I must look behind it, around it, and acquire the right perspective. There is nothing inherently good or bad about how anything looks to me, so I must not allow myself to be carried away by any impression. I must tame it. The way it looks will only become as good or bad for me as I relate it to my priorities, principles and values.

My simple version of this, for those times sudden times I need a quick Stoic jolt, is to say that nothing is ever as bad, or as good, as it looks.

When the world tells me that the appearance of money is good, I don’t need to respond with a craving to possess. When the world tells me that the appearance of popularity is good, I don’t need to respond with a fear of rejection. When the world tells me that pleasure is good, and pain is bad, I don’t need to run toward one and away from the other.

If it is most important in my estimation to be a good man, charged with an informed conscience, I will always treat my neighbor with justice, as much as I am able and as much as it assists him. No outside appearance needs to get in the way of this, because nothing, to me, is greater in measure than true thought and right action.

I can then also look out at the gains and losses of this world, and I will be able to not worry over them. They are indifferent things, and so I will take them or leave them by a very different standard, only by how they can help both others and myself become wiser and better. If they don’t help us with that, they have no worth for me.

I have never been able to find a complete explanation of the example Marcus Aurelius gives, but it is apparently a reference to a comic play of his time, now lost to us. Though I can’t speak for any content in the story, the context should make it clear that this isn’t about a mean old man nastily stealing away a poor child’s toy. He asks for the toy top to be returned, precisely because he knows that in itself it is only a toy, a trifling thing that has little value. The value will only be in what I give it, and how much I choose to let it mean to me.

I am learning to care less about what so many others care more for, and I am willing to gladly let such people have all of their appearances of reward. These appearances are just disposable playthings.

Written in 9/2006