Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.16

Remember that to change your opinion and to follow him who corrects your error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in your error.

For it is your own, the activity that is exerted according to your own movement and judgment, and indeed according to your own understanding too.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8 (tr Long)

I’ve heard all sorts of explanations as to why I should be thinking this or doing that. I should be doing what everyone else is doing, just because they are doing it, or I should be doing the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing, just because they are doing it.

One answer is to follow what is popular, while the other is to be deliberately unpopular, and what is lost in the middle of it all is a novel idea, simply thinking or doing something because it is right, regardless of who may or may not be promoting it.

I suspect our options are limited by an unhealthy concern with how we are seen by others. Should we come across as team players, or as daring individualists? But as long as the choice is the right one, does it even matters how we are seen, or how we got there?

A decision is no more or less my own, whether I have arrived at it alone or with others. My thoughts are still my own thoughts, my judgments still my own judgments, and my choices still my own choices. My approval or disapproval, my consent or opposition, always proceeds from me, both when I do so wisely or foolishly.

I am no worse or weaker if I follow good advice, just as I am no better or stronger if I ignore good advice. Why must I be so stubborn and arrogant as to not allow another to help me make myself better? Am I resisting his correction because it is wrong, or because I don’t want to be perceived as being wrong? Once I have fixed what is broken within me, nothing will be wrong anymore, and so that should be my priority.

Some people choose not be informed by any conscience at all, and replace a sense of right and wrong with a measure of gratification and calculation. Others, however, may be quite aware of their mistakes, but find it difficult to confront them. I spent too many years feeling that to say I was sorry, and to change my ways, would somehow make me lose face. What I had to learn was that admitting responsibility, and finally embracing it, was actually the strongest and bravest thing I could do.

If someone tells me that I am mistaken, whatever his own intention may be, I do not need to get caught up in a conflict about power and position. The only power that matters is my own power to make my own judgment, and that should follow only from the truth of what is said, regardless of who may have said it. 

Written in 2/2008