Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.4

Consider that men will do the same things nevertheless, even though you should burst.

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

I can’t speak for the broad sweep of time, but in the decades I’ve been stumbling around this world, I can’t help but think that there is a recent trend for people to cast more blame, to cast their curses upon their fellows, and then to cast out whoever might offend.

It could well be that only my own sensitivities have changed, but I still seem to remember occasions when I found myself in a bind, and people far better than myself would tell me to accept that others would be as they would, but that I could always choose to be better myself.

I had a principal early in elementary school, as kind and as caring a fellow you could ever know, who always had his office door open for his students. I can still remember that tin of graham crackers he had by his desk, of which you were always free to partake when you walked by, in the expectation that you would tell him how your day was going.

He even once, for no special reason I could discern, made me a wooden pencil holder, complete with my initials, which still sits next to my desk so many years later.

If you were troubled or confused, you went straight to him. If he was on the phone when you walked up, he would tell the person on the line he would call back later.

I recall a day where I was especially upset about a certain fellow in my class who liked to put me down. I said what I felt, I whined and complained, and he listened.

“Well,” he said after a moment of silence, “I can punish him, remind your teacher to keep an eye on him, or I can even call his parents in. Do you think that would help? Is there also something you can do to help?”

He smiled as he said it, and I knew he wasn’t putting me down. He wanted me to figure out my own part in all of it.

I fidgeted, grumbled, and probably rolled my eyes, but I distinctly remember answering, “Well, I suppose I could try to be nice when he’s a jerk.”

“You’ll always find good people in this life, and bad people too, and a whole lot of people in between. You can’t always change them, but you can still be kind to them.”

Well. Who would have thought an elementary school principal in a sleepy and entitled suburb would inspire Stoic wisdom?

By the time I had become a teacher myself, things already seemed quite different. Any complaint, of any degree or seriousness, brought out the lash. If anyone accused anyone else, the problem was only ever addressed by punishing the supposed offender, often quite severely, according to the social fads of the moment. I have sadly seen both too many students and too many teachers have their futures destroyed by such wrath. Too much piss and vinegar.

If I choose to live that way, what have I actually achieved? Have I changed how another thinks, chooses, and acts? Or have I perhaps only filled myself with the same hatred and dismissal I am so angry about?

A different perspective? A dissenting view? Another frame of mind? Destroy it, for it does not fit my fancies!

My head may burst from my anger, and if I made a list of all the people who I feel have hurt me, I am sure I would explode. The fact that I am still in one piece is only due to a willingness to deflate myself, to respect others, and to struggle with improving who I am. 

Written in 1/2008