You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.
Monday, February 6, 2023
Sunday, February 5, 2023
i'll gladly change
If anyone can refute me – show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective – I’ll gladly change.
It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
choose not to be harmed
Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed.
Don’t feel harmed – and you haven’t been.
Friday, February 3, 2023
concentrate every minute like a roman
Concentrate every minute like a Roman – like a man – on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override and what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. p.18, Book 2, #5. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)
Thursday, February 2, 2023
none of them can hurt me
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. p.17, Book 2, #1. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)
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