Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.41

Whatever the things that are not within your power, those that you assume to be good for you or evil, it must of necessity be that, if such a bad thing befalls you, or the loss of such a good thing, you will blame the gods, and hate men too, those who are the cause of the misfortune or the loss, or those who are suspected of being likely to be the cause.

And indeed we do much injustice, because we make a difference between these things.

But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God, or standing in a hostile attitude to man.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

Many of us will be quite familiar with that moment in life when we truly recognize that people will not always do right by us. We can sadly twist it into an attitude that people will never do any right by us at all, a constant sense of suspicion and distrust. We may come to think of too many of our circumstances as threatening, hoping only to stumble across an opportunity here or there that might offer some benefit. I am all too prone to this weakness.

The danger here is actually far deeper than only being negative. While the optimist may expect things to go well, and the pessimist may expect things to go poorly, the misleading assumption in either case is that things will “go” well or poorly at all. For the Stoic, the good and the bad are not within the events at all. They are morally indifferent to us, becoming only beneficial or harmful through our judgment and choices about them.

Hardship, poverty, disease, or death are not inherently evil. Gratification, affluence, health, or long life are not inherently good. All conditions offers us the opportunity to do something with them, and thereby to define ourselves by the only inherent human good, the exercise of virtue.

As soon as I think of a situation as helpful or harmful in itself, I will swing wildly between dependence and resentment. My sense of happiness will rise when the world treats me in one way, and it will fall when it treats me in another. It is best not to attribute any moral worth to things that happen at all, but to see things that happen as a means to acting for myself with moral worth.

Now how often have I jumped for joy when I have been granted pleasure, and how often have I squirmed in anger when I have been given pain? There is either a wallowing in gratification, and the desire for more consumption that proceeds from it, or there is a simmering rage, and the desire for payback that proceeds from it. I can trace most every wrong I have ever committed to a weakness in the face of these two impostors.

I will save myself from so much of my vice and misery if I do not make any distinction between the good and the bad in external events. I will strengthen myself in virtue and happiness if I concentrate only on the good and bad in my own thoughts and actions.

As soon as I commit myself to my own character, which is within my power, instead of my circumstances, which are outside of my power, I will no longer need to cast blame, or embrace anger, or act with hatred toward either God or my neighbor. Where I do not perceive fault, I will not demand correction. I will seek only to correct myself.

Written in 6/2007