Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.13

Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.13 (tr Long)

I think it was somewhere around the age of seven or eight that all of us at school started thinking in terms of “getting into trouble”. While we may have wanted to do certain things, like play hide-and-go-seek in the school boiler room, or chew bubble gum during class, we were now worried about getting caught, and about all the unpleasant consequences that went with that. A scolding from the teacher was bearable, but the call home to the parents most certainly was not.

And since then, I’ve had this nagging habit of assuming that trouble is something that happens to me. I will catch myself judging an action by the possible rewards or punishments, by whether I will or will not be seen, by what others will think and do, and it is my disordered attitude that is, in fact, the real source of trouble.

Events are simply things that occur, with a meaning and a purpose for themselves, but for me they will only become good or bad by the way I consider them and make use of them. The benefit or the harm, the contentment or the trouble, follow entirely from my estimation. Give me any circumstance, and I can employ it to improve or to harm my character; these things are given to me as equal, until I tip the balance.

This is a classic principle of Stoicism, easy to say, but difficult to understand, and even more difficult to live in practice. I’m so accustomed to thinking I need to avoid problems that I look only to the situation around me. I forget that I don’t need to “get out” of trouble at all, but I rather need to get the trouble out of me.

To strengthen the right way of thinking, in the face of everything that tells me otherwise, is a path to accountability and freedom. As we all grew older, the stakes got higher, but the game remained the same. Even if it was now about losing that lucrative job instead of just getting sent to the principal’s office, we were still letting ourselves be pushed around by everything external, forgetting to nourish first the virtue that is internal.

Many people like to tell us to “grow up”, and by this they usually mean following the rules and doing what we are told. Yet I hardly think of this as maturity at all, since it dodges responsibility on every level. Maturity is the building of character, not of conformity.

And notice that Marcus Aurelius isn’t appealing to some grand plan of life here, from the cradle to the grave, where all the conditions are lined up as I might prefer them. No, he speaks of today, of the here and now, of knowing that I am my own master at this moment.

Let all the rest, past, present, or future, be what it will be, and let me immediately choose to be the best man that I can be. This is a life without trouble.

Written in 8/2008