Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.42

For the good is with me, and the just.

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

Euripides is quoted yet another time, and still not for the last time. I obviously have no knowledge of what Marcus Aurelius was reading, or of what he was privately thinking, and it seems wrong for me to even speculate about the workings of a mind so much greater than my own.

Still, I have had those times where I read a novel or a poem, or I view a play or a film, and I am amazed at the many ways it can speak to me, over and over again. My enthusiasm may frustrate others, and they grow annoyed with my constant interest.

“There he goes again,” someone once said about me, “trying to discover truth!” The snicker and the rolling of the eyes told me all I needed to know about that.

It was intended as an insult, but I tried to take it as a compliment. I wondered to myself, fighting a sense of resentment, what else might possibly be worth discovering? Everything else, pleasure and pain, success and failure, happiness and misery, hinge upon that very first need.

I observe all the greed, the hatred, the lies, and, above all else, the ignorance behind it. What can I possibly do about that? Can I fix other people, and make them think with an open mind, or act with a loving heart? What nonsense. Only they can do that for themselves. I can try to help them, but the choices are theirs.

What remains for me is to strive to be good myself, not as an exercise in vanity, but as a commitment to that very truth some others might disdain. I must struggle with the temptation to be served, and insist that I am only here to serve. A man is, after all, a creature defined by his own choices and actions, not by the choices and actions of others.

The only obstacle to doing this is my own confusion. I must first seek what is good and just through my own thinking and doing, and then also seek to surround myself with people who share in that same purpose. Poor ground yields no fruit.

Then, both virtue and decency are inside of me, as well as outside of me. It isn’t rocket science. It’s as simple as that.

Then, I may rest content that I have done my best, in the company of others doing their best. 

Written in 12/2007