Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.44

Different things delight different people; it is my delight to keep the ruling faculty sound without turning away either from any man or from any of the things that happen to men, but looking at and receiving all with welcome eyes and using everything according to its value.

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

I’m always one for being committed to what is true and good, and I am at the same time quite wary of any sort of intellectual bullying. After all, I can hardly say that I want other people to think for themselves, while simultaneously telling them exactly what they must think. The truth should set you free, not make you my slave.

People will seek joy in all sorts of ways. If they have come to know a better life, let me be happy for them. If they have fallen into a worse life, let me suggest improvement to them, not by dictating, but by the worth of my own example. Whatever I say about happiness is meaningless if I myself am not living in happiness.  Put your own house in order! Physician, heal yourself!

So much of what we believe will satisfy us seems to be built on the assumption of conflict. I may think I need to always be fighting with myself, and to always be fighting with other people. Now I will see that around me each and every day, and yet I don’t see people finding any delight in this; they seem to be in a state of constant anxiety.

Will it help if I tell them how wrong they are, offering only another source of opposition and strife? Or could I simply live in the way I find most delightful, hoping they can see its merit for their own lives, while also being quite content if they completely ignore me?

I don’t need to be at war with myself. There is serenity within me when I choose to let reason rule, when the inferior is ordered by the superior, the lesser measured according to the greater. This means that I can only act for the good if I first understand what is good, and the reasons why it is good. In this way, all circumstances and all feelings can be of service to me, because I can know how they can be directed to living well.

I don’t need to be at war with others. If I can choose to rule myself, I can also respect the manner in which others choose to rule themselves. Whether I believe they are right or wrong, whatever they think and whatever they do only offers me a greater opportunity to practice virtue for myself. They have their place in the balance of all things, just as much as I have my place.

I try to remember that a wise man, who surely will also be a loving man, and therefore also a deeply contented man, will accept things as they are instead of casting them aside, and will seek to find the good in things instead of dwelling upon the evil. That is the sort of delight and serenity I’m seeking, where even a cloudy or stormy day is a profoundly beautiful day. 

Written in 4/2008