Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.2

How can our principles become dead, unless the thoughts that correspond to them are extinguished? But it is in your power continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame.

I can have that opinion about anything, which I ought to have. If I can, why am I disturbed? The things that are external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind.

Let this be the state of your affects, and you may stand straight. To recover your life is in your power. Look at things again as you used to look at them. For in this consists the recovery of your life.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 7 (tr Long)

To think how often I have heard people say that they can’t help but think a certain way, or that they have lost their convictions, or that they can’t find the will for something. Yes, we may feel tired, or discouraged, or disappointed, but while our feelings may come and go, our thoughts and choices are strictly ours to control. They don’t simply happen to us, but are rather things that we make happen.

One of the most frustrating examples of this, I find, is when people engage in a romantic relationship, but then suddenly say “I can’t help it, but I just don’t feel the same anymore.” Such a statement is based on the false premise that love is only an emotion. Love indeed expresses itself with very powerful feelings, but it is more than just a feeling. Love is a choice, a commitment, and a promise. Love proceeds form our thinking, which is always within our power.

If a fire within me is starting to go out, I can always decide to fan the flames. Things will be what they are, but how I judge about those things, how I choose to perceive them as being good or bad for me, is entirely up to me. Nothing outside of me ever makes me think as I do.

If I do not first estimate something to be troubling, then I will not feel troubled. If I do not first consider something to be harmful to me, then I will not feel harmed. If I can only discover what is of benefit within any circumstance, I will always find a way to improve myself.

I will fail to do this only when I am convinced that my mind isn’t strong enough, or that my attitude is unavoidable, or that the impressions things make must determine my own actions. The mind, however, is not ruled by its own objects. It rises above them when it considers them, and when it discerns value within them. It will only be as capable or incapable of ruling its own judgments as it thinks itself to be. The irony is that the mind only fails itself when it decides it will fail itself.

This is the root, I suspect, of all most powerful human encouragement, and the source of recovering ourselves after we have surrendered to the conditions that surround us. I can always stand up again, I can always revive my own character and principles.

Now some people will tell me that I can be whatever I want to be, and that I can achieve anything I set out to achieve. I must add a distinctly Stoic clarification to such a claim. It will most certainly not be within my power to make the world as I would like it, though it is always within my power to make myself as I would like it. The true greatness of any human achievement is never a mastery of circumstances, but a mastery of the self within the face of circumstances.

Nature has made me so that I can be subject to my own reason, and she has made other human beings to be subject to their own reason, and she has made other things subject to their own principles, all under the absolute rule of Universal Reason. Each aspect will play its own part, and I can always be confident that my own part, rightly understood, is completely my own, and completely invincible.

Written in 8/2007