Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.25

Cast away opinion: you are saved.

Who then hinders you from casting it away?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.25 (tr Long)

We’ve all heard the conversation, and we may well have been on the receiving end of the challenge.

“I desperately wish I could be happy!”

“What’s stopping you?”

Now I may assume that the person telling me to take control is only being dismissive and rude. Perhaps he is, or perhaps he is actually trying to be helpful. In either case, what he says is completely true. I am the only obstacle to my own happiness.

Am I frustrated, discouraged, despondent, angry, offended, or jealous? There is someone or something I am concerned about, but the concern rests within me. The situation will be as it is, but I will decide what I will make of the situation.

If I can change it, I have no reason to be worried. If I can’t change it, the worry won’t do me any good either. My judgment will make all the difference.

If it is my thinking that gets in the way of being at peace, then let me alter my thinking. If an opinion about this or that is dragging me down, then let me rid myself of that opinion.

It may not be easy to change my mental habits, and it may not happen overnight, but at least I know where the work needs to be done. No one stands in my way but myself.

Bad thoughts lead to bad actions, and bad actions lead to bad character. I have just made myself a miserable man, because I have made myself a morally empty man. Solve the problem at the root, I remind myself, and dispose of those bad thoughts. I do not need them, and so I will throw them away. I can now be free of all sorts of burdens.

I was always an odd and eccentric fellow, but as the years have passed I find that I simply do not see the world as most people around me do. I have felt lonely, I have assumed that I don’t belong, and I have been tempted to surrender.

Yet if I am certain, being as sincere and humble as I can be, that this is the right way for me to live, then this is how I should live. My doubt comes only from my confused opinions, opinions that are still rooted in a thinking of conformity and appearance. Cast away those opinions, which are entirely of my own making, and I have saved myself from myself.

Written in 9/2009