Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.4

He who does wrong does wrong against himself.

He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.4 (tr Long)

When I was a child, one of the kindly teachers tried to tell me that bullies only treated others poorly out of anger and jealously. When I was a young man, a friend tried to explain that the girl who had lied and cheated was the one who lost the most. Through the years that followed, I would see the hypocrisy, the greed, and the vanity, and I would try to remind myself what my uncle had always said: “They already have their reward.”

And quite often, I couldn’t believe these things, and I suspect there were two reasons for this. First, those people may have been living poorly, but they seemed to come across as so strong and confident. Second, my own losses seemed so great, and I could hardly imagine that the offenders could be in a worse state. It took a more serious commitment to Stoic living to see where my errors lay.

First, what a man wants to show to others may itself be a game of deception. I knew this because I would catch myself doing it all the time, trying to look brilliant on the outside, while feeling like I was rotting on the inside. It is quite easy to both lie to others and to oneself.

Second, my own losses only seemed so great because I was seeking the wrong source of contentment. If I thought that gratification, and money, and popularity were the best things, of course I would bemoan their absence. I didn’t see that those who were taking these things from me were throwing away something far more valuable.

If someone pushed me around, or stole my possessions, or laughed at me, I would be losing something in the circumstances around me. But the fellow who did the pushing, or the stealing, or the laughing was losing something of the character within him. Who was really in the worse state, the one who was denied what was external to him, or the one who rejected the very dignity that was internal to him?

I may have a preference to feel comfort, or be wealthy, or be respected, but whether you give me those things or not, I can still choose to live with virtue. Yet someone who thinks and acts out of vice has already damaged his very happiness, because he does not follow his nature as human, a creature made to know the truth and love the good.

People who are abusers may not quite understand how they have gone wrong, but the absence of living well means that they are still consumed by misery. Notice how they reach out, this way and that, to try to fill the emptiness. I should meet them with compassion, not with hatred.

Written in 7/2008