100 Things Ryan Holiday Learned From Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

> - **Deep Reflection**: True understanding requires repeated study and reflection on texts.
> - **Character over Success**: Success is defined by one’s character rather than achievements or wealth.
> - **Gratitude Practice**: Acknowledging the contributions of others is vital for personal growth and well-being.
> - **Impermanence of Life**: The inevitability of death reminds us to value the present and our connections with others.
> - **Self-Discipline**: Strive for personal discipline while maintaining compassion for others.

You can't be satisfied just getting the gist of something you had to read and study deeply to return to the same books over and over again. And actually, Marcus quoting the philosopher Heraclettus would say that we never step in the same river twice. I'm Ryan Holliday. I've written a number of books about stoic philosophy, spoken to the NBA, the NFL, sitting senators, and special forces leaders. Almost 15 years now, I have been reading and rereading one of the greatest books of all time, Marcus Aurelius's *Meditations*. Actually, this is my new leather edition that I had made up. I put so many miles on this one and my other copies that I wanted something to really stand the test of time.

Marcus Aurelius didn't read a book once and think that he got it. He read it over and over and over again. I've probably read *Meditations* a hundred times. I was reading it just yesterday, and in today's video, I want to give you 100 lessons that I've gotten from my hundreds of reads of *Meditations* over the last decade. And I hope they prove useful to you, and I hope most of all that you go pick this book up and read it yourself.

One of the most compelling and jaw-dropping parts of *Meditations* comes at really the beginning, the opening of book two. But book one is Debts and Lessons. I'll talk more about that later. He says today, the people you will meet will be jealous, stupid, annoying, and frustrating. He lists all the things that people are going to be like today.

And part of this is just the stoic idea of being prepared, right? The unexpected blow lands heaviest. If you think people are gonna be amazing and kind and get out of your way, and you're gonna only hit green lights, you're gonna be sorely disappointed. But he says the point is not to think about how awful people are. Not at all.

You have to realize why they are like this. He says it's because they don't know good from bad. They don't have the same training as you, but they are still like you. He said you cannot allow them to implicate you in their ugliness. He says we were meant to work together. We are brothers and sisters, and so what? 

*Meditations* begins with this seemingly depressive note. But if you stick with it, and I think this is such an important lesson that you get from reading Marcus over and over again, if you stick with him, you realize that beneath this honesty, this bluntness, this matter-of-factness, is a huge caring heart, a heart that will not allow itself to harden or be turned against other people. 

In one passage in *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius writes down what he calls epithets for the self. He talks about being honest, talks about being upright. These are words he says that he can live by. A couple of different times in my life, I've tried to do that. But part of one of the daily stoic challenges. A few years ago, I wrote down seven of them. I wrote honest, calm, fair, father, brave, generous, and still. 

These are words that I try to live by. I want to make decisions, take actions that will demonstrate that idea, which will show that those are the watchwords or the epithets that I live by that I could be described by. And so I think of all the exercises in *Meditations*, that's one that we can all practice is just come up with the epithets for the self, the rules, the descriptors for your character that you want to live and model day in and day out.

But really, the true opening of *Meditations* is the Debts and Lessons section. Almost a full 10% of the book is Marcus Aurelius writing what he learned from and what he was grateful for and the people who trained him, the people who raised him. The fact that 10% of the book is gratitude to me is so important. It's a statement of priorities and the role that gratitude must play in our lives. 

Nothing is so inspiring as remembering the values and virtues and seeing them embodied in the people around you. He never knew *Meditations* would be published. This wasn't for other people to see that he was grateful to them. It was actually the act of expressing the gratitude that was a gift to him, and we have to have an active gratitude practice in our own lives.

One of my favorite stories about Marcus Aurelius is not in *Meditations*, but at the depth of the Antonine Plague. He sells off the palace furnishings to pay down on Rome's debt, which actually does connect to something. In *Meditations*, he talks about how lucky he feels that he's never had to ask anyone else for financial help. 

And whenever anyone else came to him asking for financial help, he was always in a position to say yes. He was a generous and kind person. Yes, he was privileged and wealthy and powerful. He tried to use those things for good. He tried to absorb the blows or the pain or the difficulties before other people. 

This is a print I have from one of my favorite passages from Marcus Aurelius. I have it on the wall: "Who sells in the Daily Stoic's service waste no more time arguing what a good man should be; be one." 

And I think arguably Marcus Aurelius’ greatest contributions to philosophy are not what he wrote in this book. No, what Marcus’ greatest contributions to philosophy are how he lived, that even if he had never written a philosophical work, he would still be seen as a kind of philosopher king because he embodied the ideas. He lived them. 

He demonstrated that a king, an emperor, a person of power or influence or wealth, could be good and decent, could do the right thing, could be everything that people expected of him. And that's just to me, the most important thing we can take from Marcus Aurelius. 

Marcus Aurelius says that no matter what's happening in the world, no matter what other people are doing to us, we always have this superpower. We always have the power to have no opinion. We don't have to decide that it's good or bad. We don't have to decide that it's urgent or not. We don't have to decide anything about it all. You can just let it go.

You can let it pass by. You don't have to figure it out; you don't have to have a hot take on it. Just let the weather be the weather. This political situation be that political situation doesn't have to be good or bad. We don't have to have an opinion about everything.

One of my first reads of *Meditations*, I noted that Marcus says, "can only ruin your life if it ruins your character." The idea that success wasn't whether you made money, whether you got what you wanted, it was whether you protected your character, right? Jesus says, "What good is gaining the whole world if you lose your soul?"

And we can imagine Marcus struggling with this as the Emperor of Rome. It doesn't matter how many buildings he builds or what lands he conquers. To him, it matters if he is a good person or not. 

I remember shortly after I read *Meditations* for the first time, I had to get on a flight. I was in a middle seat on this long cross-country flight and I was next to someone who was jostling for the armrest. The person in front of me reclined back. It was just one of those unpleasant experiences in modern travel. 

But I thought back to one of my favorite passages in *Meditations* where Marcus talks about being next to a smelly person. He says, "Yeah, it's awful. You can say something to them if you want, but if you're not gonna say something, then you just have to bear it."

No amount of gritting their teeth or silently resenting them is going to change it. This stewing doesn't help them or you being miserable doesn't help them, or you're just gonna carry this nastiness with you when you go. And so I think Marcus would have dealt with the same kinds of inconveniences and annoyances as all of us, even if his life was more sheltered than most of ours. 

But he reminded himself that this is what life entails, and either say something about it, or you've got to get comfortable putting up with it. 

One of Marcus Aurelius most brilliant rhetorical questions is this. He says, "Is a world without shameless people possible?" The answer is, of course, no. And he says, "Okay, so you've met one of them," right? This person that you meet, they're one of those people; you know that it's impossible for the world to exist without them. You know, inevitably, statistically, you will run into one of them. 

That's it. He says, reminding yourself that this person is one of a certain number helps you not get so upset about it, not be so surprised by it, and most of all, not despair by it. Most people are the opposite of that person. 

And I think for the word shameless, we can plug in all sorts of things: people who lie, people who steal, people who cheat, people who do all the things that we don't like. A certain percentage of them are always going to exist and always have existed. 

And better yet, when we remind ourselves still that they are the minority, we can find a way to categorize them, accept them, and then move on. 

A couple of years ago, I wrote this book, *Conspiracy*. Peter Thiel was outed as gay by this sort of Silicon Valley gossip rag. They treated him very cruelly, and he spent millions of dollars and years of his life plotting and scheming to destroy it, which he successfully did. 

And there's a lot that was really interesting in it, a lot that was really innovative in doing that, I think even some things to be impressed by it. As I was talking about in the book every day as I was writing it, I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite lines from *Meditations*. Marcus Aurelius says, "The best revenge is to not be like your enemy." 

The point is that getting even often makes you like or worse than the person who supposedly did this grievous, heinous thing to you. We see this in Marcus Aurelius’ life; he's betrayed by one of his most trusted generals, and he tries not to be angry about it. He has to deal with it, yes, but he tries to actually use it as an opportunity to show the Roman people how one deals with being betrayed, how one deals with civil strife. 

You can't let the person who wronged you turn you into something just like that. Gregory Hayes in his translation of *Meditations*, he makes a great point, and I missed it the first couple of times. He says that nowhere does Marcus identify as a Stoic. 

And he says, actually, if you asked Marcus, he probably wouldn't have identified with any school at all. Even though *Meditations* is of course filled with all sorts of Stoic observations and principles, he says that Marcus would have identified as a philosopher. 

Paul Graham, in one of his famous essays, says, "Keep your identity small. Don't identify as a singular thing or with a singular ideology. You want to be a free agent." This is why Seneca quotes so much from Epicurus. He reads widely; he understands widely. 

The point is not to be a Stoic philosopher. The point is to be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. There’s a beautiful line in Joseph Brodsky's essay about the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. It dates back to Marcus’ time, but the base of which was redesigned by Michelangelo. 

Brodsky says something like, if Marcus Aurelius is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins. I don't know what that means exactly. There's something beautiful and haunting about it. Maybe it's the idea that when you read *Meditations*, you can't help but be struck by classical beauty and perfection, in some ways the highest expression of human greatness. 

And then you look at us; you look at the way we talk to each other, you look at the things we say, you look at how we live and act and think, and you go, yeah, we're the old, worn out, beaten down, falling apart things. The ancient world feels fresh, modern, new, and perfect in so many ways. 

And I just love that idea: if Marcus Aurelius is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins. It's actually in book six that I found the meditation that I would build my own first book of stoic philosophy around. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. 

He says, look, stuff can get in the way. You can be impeded, he says, but nothing can impede your intentions or your dispositions. He says the mind can convert to its own purposes the obstacles to our acting. That’s the power of stoicism, that we always have the opportunity to practice a virtue. 

We don't choose where we are; we don't choose what's happening. But if you accept the obstacle and work with what you're given, Marcus Aurelius says in *Meditations*, an alternative will present itself, another piece of what you're trying to assemble, action by action. 

Acceptance can seem like this weakness that it’s stopping you from moving. For in fact, acceptance means this door is closed. Now I can go try this other door. You first have to accept that the obstacle exists, that it is real, that it has constraints or impediments or difficulties, to then decide what you're gonna do about it: are you gonna go around? Are you gonna go over? Or are you going to use the weight of it against itself? 

It's an opportunity to do this other thing you couldn't have done under ordinary circumstances. That acceptance is not passive resignation; it's the first step in taking an active approach. And Marcus returns to this theme over and over and over again in *Meditations*. 

In one passage, he says, "A strong stomach digests what it eats. A fire turns what you throw on top of it into flame and brightness and heat." His point is, we can use our obstacles as fuel. The things that happen to us in life are opportunities. 

This is the essence of Stoicism. This is our chance, whatever it is. It might not be the virtue we wanted to practice; it might not be the virtue we're most comfortable practicing, but it's nevertheless an opportunity to be great. 

I remember I was once talking to the great Robert Greene, and I asked him what one of his favorite passages from Marcus Aurelius's *Meditations* was. He said it was the one where Marcus Aurelius is talking about. He's looking at this big feast, and he says, "Oh, that's a dead bird." He said, "Oh, that's dead pig. Oh, this wine is rotted grapes." 

I said, "Robert, why did you like that?" And he said, "That's what I try to do in my writing. I try to deconstruct things to take away the preconceived notions." It's actually what Marcus says. He says it's about stripping things of the legend that encrust them, about seeing them as they actually are. 

I think that's not only what a philosopher has to do, but I think that's what a great writer like Robert Greene does. I call this contemptuous expressions. These things kind of loom over us. We go, "Oh, Harvard is so important. Look at the fancy people that go there. Look how hard it is. Look how expensive it is." 

But also, you could look at the idiots who've graduated from Harvard, the monsters that have come out of there, right? You could be like, "Oh, the president's the most prestigious, important job in the world." But look at some of the people who have been president. Look how incompetent they were. 

You're supposed to see things for what they are, strip them of the legend that encrusts them, see them as they are. And Marcus Aurelius was doing this even with his own purple cloak, the thing that signified he was the emperor. He said, "This is just a regular cloak dyed with shellfish blood." 

You see him as it actually was, which is such a critical practice. The famous dictum from Lord Acton is that power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. What's remarkable about Marcus Aurelius is that he's perhaps the only exception to this rule; we know he's given absolute power. 

What is the first thing he does with it? He gives half of it away to his stepbrother. He isn't corrupted by it. It's a remarkable testament to the power of this philosophy, the idea of what stoicism can make a person. And that's not an accident. 

In *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius warns himself against being caesarized, of being dyed purple, of being changed by the power and fame and money that the position has given him. And we all have to be worried about being caesarized or dyed purple. We have to be worried about being changed by the number of followers that we have or the promotion that we just got, by the famous name that we inherited. 

You're not special. The rules do apply to you. You're not better than anyone else. Power doesn't have to corrupt. What it can do is reveal who you actually are. In one point in *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius tells himself to take Plato's view, to zoom out, to see things from above. 

And he does that. He talks about how enormous armies fighting over a border, a whole country could be not that dissimilar from a far enough view to ants fighting over a piece of food on the ground. It's beautiful and quite impressive that he could come to this point of view because in Marcus’ time, the highest he could have gotten off the ground was like a couple-story building or maybe the top of a mountain. 

He didn't have access to an airplane like all of us do. He would have never seen the blue marble photo which showed Earth from space. But when you get to Plato's view, you're just reminded how inconsequential most of the things we get upset about are. 

And then you are also reminded of how interconnected and interdependent and together we all are. Marcus says this too: that the borders don't matter, that vast oceans don't matter. We're all in this same thing together, that we are tied together more than we'd like to think that we are. 

Pierre Hadot, one of the great scholars of Marcus Aurelius, talks about the oceanic feeling. Marcus Aurelius talks about the view from above. He talks about immensity, how all of experience gapes before us. 

Marcus is trying to meditate on the vastness and the connectedness of everything in the world. He talks about looking at the stars and watching yourself alongside them. I think he's seeking out these kind of humbling experiences. You could think about why that would be so important to someone who was literally the center of the universe. He wanted to remind himself that that wasn't strictly true. 

One of the things Marcus Aurelius does say in *Meditations* about the people who would have always been flattering him and telling him he is amazing were people who would have been criticizing him or attacking him. He says, "Think about what they just submitted to a few minutes ago. Think about what they do in private. Think about who they actually are." 

And when you know who they actually are—how weak they are, how corrupted they are, petty they are—suddenly their approval, their opinion about you, won't matter very much. Marcus Aurelius clearly hated all the flatterers and sycophants. 

But the thing he hated most was the people who would say things in passing like, "I'm going to be honest with you. Let me be straight with you. Let me tell you what I really think." He said to say those things was actually a confession, a self-indictment. You're admitting that that's not the norm; that's not what you normally do. 

People should know you're going to be honest. He said an honest person should be like the smelly goat in the room. You should know they're there the second they walk in. And nobody had to think that about Marcus. 

In fact, from an early age, Marcus Aurelius was named Verissimus, or the truest one. We think that's because he was so unflinchingly truthful with Hadrian, his adopted grandfather—in effect, the most powerful man in Rome. Marcus just told him what he thought. He didn't hold back and neither can you. 

It's clear that one of Marcus Aurelius’ passions is the theater. He loves the theater. And we know this because he quotes so widely from plays. Some of those plays didn't even survive. The only surviving remnants of them are his quotes in *Meditations*. But he would talk about going to the theater, watching a tragedy, and what this can teach us about life. 

He even talks about looking at your own life as a kind of play. He says if watching something in the theater would make you interested or make you laugh, make you think, it can't make you angry in life when it happens to you. You have to cultivate this same kind of philosophical approach today. 

People might think, "Oh, philosophy is this intellectual pursuit. It can't possibly jibe with theater or watching television or following sports." Of course it can. Marcus Aurelius was drawn from the popular art forms of his time in drawing philosophical lessons from them that he used to be better at his life, which is the purpose of all art. 

Speaking of the role that art can have in teaching us things or popular culture can have in teaching us things, you consider probably the most popular dramatical rendering of Marcus is in the movie *Gladiator.* He's the old guy at the beginning of the movie that Joaquin Phoenix's character kills. 

Now, this isn't a movie explicitly based on stoicism. And all the time, you see on the Internet quotes from the movie attributed to Marcus that are really only in the movie and not real. But the movie does capture, quite shockingly, the evil and the awfulness of Commodus. 

And that question has to hover over your readings of *Meditations*: How can such a wise, decent, patient, and philosophical person have raised such a terrible kid? It's a tricky question, and I don't have a good answer. We've talked about it before on Daily Stoic. I mean, almost all of Marcus Aurelius’ children die. Commodus is his only remaining male heir.

You know, maybe Commodus is just a psychopath, and it doesn't say anything about Marcus. Maybe Marcus was trapped by the traditions of his time. Antoninus, Hadrian, and the preceding emperors didn't have a male son, so there wasn't an issue. But it is a tricky question. 

And I think the overall lesson we take from this is just talking about these things, just thinking about these things. It doesn't mean you're going to be good at this really difficult thing that is raising children. That should humble us and also, I think, even make us question some of the things that we see Marcus Aurelius talk about in *Meditations*.

Steve Jobs learned from his father, who was a carpenter, the importance of caring about the craft—how something was done, even the parts that no one would see, like the back of a fence or the back of a drawer. That's why the inside of a MacBook computer is beautiful, even though your average user will never crack it open and see it again.

*Meditations*, being a book for the author, not for the reader, is so fascinating. Marcus Aurelius is writing in Greek, not in Latin, because at that time Greek was the language of philosophy. It was a harder, but a more beautiful language. He quotes from memory perfectly these obscure passages from philosophy. 

He makes these observations about the way that grain bends or the flecks of foam on a boar's mouth. He was a beautiful writer, but it was beautiful just for himself. I mean, that's one of the reasons I slaved over this edition. I just wanted it to be amazing and beautiful, to reflect the workmanship and craftsmanship of *Meditations* itself.

And I just always think of that lesson from Marcus and from Steve Jobs. It doesn’t matter whether other people will see it, whether it's in your journal or for publication. You have to care about what it is and how it's made. 

We never step in the same river twice. The river changes and we change, right? When you pick up a book for the first time, then a second time, and the third time, maybe even 100th time, each time you get something different out of it. I think so often we get a book, read it once, and go, "I got it," right? 

But that's not how it works. Stoicism is a topic you're supposed to return to over and over and over again. I've put a lot of miles on my copies of *Meditations* over the years. The covers are falling off; there are different highlighters and pens. I've folded like almost every page at this point because I've returned to these passages so many times. Like now, almost everything in it is marked up. 

So one of the things I've been doing recently is rereading it on a fresh copy. And I have a really special fresh copy. This is my leather-bound edition that I actually had made, which you can buy @dailystoic.com. I'm returning to *Meditations* now with fresh eyes. You can see all the notes that I have in here. All these things have been hitting me in a new way because the book is the same, it's the same translation, but the format's a little bit different, the font size is a little bit different, the moment in time is different, my experiences are different. 

The lessons are the same, but the lessons that I need are different. So *Meditations* has to be a book that you return to over and over again, one you can't be satisfied just getting the gist of. It has to be a daily practice and ongoing practice; something you return to over and over and over again. 

This new one, the leather-bound edition, I think could last you your whole life. I'm really proud of this. It's so awesome. And on the back it has, I think, a wonderful encapsulation of *Meditations*. Marcus says, "Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being. Remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it without hesitation. Speak the truth as you see it, but with kindness, with humility, without hypocrisy." 

That's the journey, I think *Meditations* is trying to get us all towards—one that each time we pick up the book, we get a little bit closer toward. I'm really proud of this. You can check it out. It's got awesome new illustrations on each of the twelve books. It's got gilt edge pages; it's high-quality leather; Marcus’ face on the front; I think you're really gonna like this. 

And then at the back, I wrote a biography of Marcus that I think everyone should read. So check out the new book on dailystoic.com, or get it anywhere books are sold, including my bookstore, the Painted Porch. 

In my office, I have all sorts of reminders of Marcus. I have the print, I have this bust of him. This is a bust I have from Marcus Aurelius from the 1840s. I have a painting of Marcus that someone did for me. 

When Marcus says at the beginning of *Meditations* that nothing is so inspiring as seeing the virtues embodied in the people around us, I think this is also true in how you decorate your space, your house, your office, whatever. Find philosophical embodiments of these ideas, things that remind you. 

When I look at those things, it's just this little sort of subconscious reminder of who I want to be, how I want to live. I'm looking at the virtues being embodied around me, and that keeps me on the straight and narrow. 

In writing the Daily Stoic, I got to parse the exact word choice of Marcus in ways that I probably ordinarily wouldn't have. One of the passages that really struck me the first time I read *Meditations* was when he says, "How trivial the things we want so passionately are." 

And I don’t know, I guess I was struck by the idea that we want so passionately are. I thought that was a beautiful expression, but it was actually in the midst of translating it and seeing it from a different perspective. I realized he’s saying how trivial the things we want so badly are. 

I think there’s something to be said about reading and rereading where almost like a Talmudic scholar, you're debating—What does this word mean? Or that word mean? Or what about this? Or what about this meaning? There just is something about diving super deep. Sometimes the superficial of the first take you take is the one that hits you, and sometimes it's the 50th take where you finally get it or you get it on a level that you wouldn't have gotten before. 

I remember when you were translating Marcus Aurelius for Daily Stoic, there's a passage where Marcus Aurelius says, "Stop your whining. Stop this miserable whining monkey life." I remember the editor said, "Monkeying around is this expression Marcus could have possibly used—would Marcus Aurelius have even known what a monkey was?" 

And it turns out, yes. In fact, Commodus probably killed one in the coliseum. He’s a psychopath. Just the more you play and dig into the language, the more you understand. And this is why reading and rereading is so important. You just never know. Behind every word, behind every word choice, it's like a whole other room to explore.

It would have been my third or fourth reading of Marcus Aurelius that I caught this line because you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. This is the Stoic idea of memento mori. It's not that you will die tomorrow and you should try heroin or go to an orgy; it's that you never know when life is going to end. 

And so you can't take it for granted. You cannot take it for granted. Another one that I didn't get at first, Marcus Aurelius is saying to avoid imperialization. He says that indelible stain. And I didn't really know what he meant by imperialization. And that's when I saw it in another translation. I realized what he's talking about is imperialization, like the imperial system of Rome. 

He means to not be caesarized, to not be corrupted by his position. So I think sometimes it's just where you are. You don't know what a certain word means or just the intonation that you're reading about. It doesn’t hit you in the right way. 

And this is why you have to come back to things, why you can't just be satisfied with getting the gist of something. You have to return to it over and over again because you get it in a new way. It also is why, as much as I've loved the Hay translation and why we have this edition, it's why I've read the other translations. 

It's why I like the Robin Waterfield annotated version, because he's bringing his perspective, he's breaking down what he sees in it. And each time you do that, you get something new. In *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius says we have to be more like a boxer or a wrestler than a dancer. 

He says we have to be dug in and ready for sudden attacks. You know? He saw life as a battle. He saw fate as being indifferent to us, but also dealing serious blows to us. And if you’re not ready for it, if you think life is a dance, if you think life is fun, if you think everything's gonna be alright, then man, fortune has some real surprises in store for you. And if you look at Marcus’ life, that was true. 

One thing after another; he was ready for it. He was dug in. He was ready for those sudden attacks. And you and I have to be also. At one point in *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius says, "Avoid false friendship at all costs." He says, "Nothing is more painful; nothing is worse." And he knows this from experience. 

I tell an obstacle is the way—the story of Marcus being betrayed by Avidius Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends, who declares himself emperor, essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting of people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. 

People could be led astray; people could have evil intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this, and we have to be prepared for it. One of my favorite lines in *Meditations* says, "To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference." Good things happen; we get awards, we succeed, we make money. Awesome. 

But that doesn't say anything about you as a person. We fail, we fall short, we get criticized. Great. That doesn't say anything about you as a person. Another translation says, "Receive without pride, let go without attachment." That sort of even keel—not being affected, not getting too high or too low, not identifying with any of it, but identifying solely with your character. 

Marcus Aurelius really tried to do good. He tried to help as many people. But he also understood that doing the right thing, doing good things, it wasn't always going to be recognized and it wasn't always going to be appreciated. He says in *Meditations* that you can't expect the third thing. 

Being recognized, being appreciated, being thanked for what happened. You already got the thanks, he said, by doing the right thing, by feeling, by knowing that it was the right thing. Everything else, the Stoics would say, is extra nice to have, but it can't be why you do it. 

And I think often of this idea of doing the third thing—the third thing is wanting to hit the bestseller list. The third thing is wanting the thank you card. The third thing is the person coming to you and saying, "I just want to let you know what that meant to me, how much it helped me. I want to pay you back." No, you do it because it was the right thing. 

If you get the third thing, if you get the extra, that's great. For the Stoics, that shouldn't be something you want. But most of all, it can't be something you expect because you will be disappointed. 

In book twelve of *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius says, "It never ceases to amaze me. We love ourselves more than other people, yet we care about their opinions more than our own." I thought about this when my first book of Stoic philosophy came out. I had worked really hard on it. I knew how many copies it sold; I knew what it deserved, and there it was, not on the bestseller list. 

It got skunked for some inexplicable reason. And I had to remind myself my judgment of the book is what counts. My opinion is what matters here. So often, that's what we do. We like a shirt, or we like a show, or we like this, or we like where we live. 

And then other people say, "Well, that's not cool," or "That's strange," or "That's weird," or "It's incorrect for the following reasons." And we give up our own internal sense of what we like or dislike, what's right or wrong to do what everyone else is doing. 

Sanity is tying your success to what you say and do, it says. Insanity is tying it to what other people say and do. So to me, this is one of the most powerful lessons of Marcus. That even the Emperor of Rome was struggling with it, I think shows how difficult it is to maintain that inner scorecard, that inner compass, when everyone around you is thinking or saying something differently than you. 

It would be a mistake to see Marcus Aurelius as perfect. He wasn't perfect because no one is perfect. He’s a human being. Marcus, instead, was trying to get better, always. *Meditations* was Marcus Aurelius writing notes to himself. When Marcus Aurelius warns against having a temper, or being afraid of death, or being ambitious, or any of the things that he talks about, he's not lecturing you. He's lecturing him. Probably because he just lost his temper; probably because he struggled with that. 

So you don't want to see Marcus as perfect. You want to see Marcus as a fellow human being striving to be their best, just as you and I are striving to be our best. Bill Belichick, the greatest football coach in history, tells his players, "Do your job for Marcus Aurelius." What is that? 

What is your job? Marcus Aurelius asks himself that same question in *Meditations*. He says, "What is my vocation? It's to be a good person." That's the job at the end of the day—to be a good person, to do good things, to make a positive difference in the world for yourself and the people around you. 

In book five and thirty-seven, Marcus Aurelius says, "I was a fortunate man, but at some point fortune abandoned me." And we can imagine Marcus saying this after the plague, after he’s burying another child, maybe after he hears again that perhaps his wife is cheating on him, maybe his health has failed him again, and he catches himself again. 

This is what he's doing in *Meditations*. He's constantly catching himself. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune, he says, is good character, good intentions, and good actions. And I just love that idea so much, right? 

It wasn't what was happening to him in the outside. Fortune wasn't this external thing; good fortune, feeling good, being good—this was something that was up to him, that was inside him and the choices that he made and the actions that he took. I was saying before that one of the things Marcus does in *Meditations* is he quotes from playwrights or bits of lines from the theater that particularly struck him. 

One of my favorites is this lost line from the poet Euripides. He says, "And why should we be angry at the world as if the world would notice?" We don't know what this plays from; we don't know the larger context. But it's such a great Stoic line. Getting angry, being pissed off, being resentful, being bitter—the world doesn't care. It is indifferent to you and me. 

All we can try to do, as the Stoics say, is maintain that goodness, preserve our character, focus on how we respond. One thing Marcus doesn't talk a lot about in *Meditations* is happiness or joy. But I think that goes back to the idea that he wasn't talking about things he didn't need help with. 

He's not having to remind himself that jokes are funny, that sex feels good. In fact, he's reminding himself of the opposite—that sex might feel good in the moment but can cause regrets, complications, or problems later on. He's reminding himself of the things that he needs the most help with. 

A nice fancy bed is better than a hard, uncomfortable one. He doesn't need a reminder of that, right? So *Meditations* as Marcus Aurelius is talking about the things that are important in life. 

But we should not take that omission as meaning anything more than that. The Stoics were happy; the Stoics had joy; the Stoics loved. And we know Marcus did these things. Stoics were just like us. Marcus had some sense of what human flourishing or happiness was; that's just not what he was talking the most about in *Meditations*.

I think the passage that hit me most from *Meditations* is in book five. Marcus Aurelius talks about struggling to get out of bed in the morning. He's just like you and I. And he's saying, "But it's so nice here under the covers." And he says, "But are you meant to feel nice? To huddle under the covers and be warm?" No, he said, "You were meant to do the work of a human being. You gotta get up; you gotta get after it." 

And when I read that in college for the first time, it hit me so much. I taped it up in my wall. I've been thinking about it ever since. My friend Steven Pressfield talks about the resistance, the thing that gets in between us and what we want to do. He says, "Nobody says, I'm never gonna write my symphony." He says, "I'm gonna do it tomorrow." 

Marcus Aurelius struggles with the resistance too, like all of us. He says, "You could be good today. Instead, you choose tomorrow." We put it off. And actually, Seneca says something similar. He says, "The one thing all fools have in common is that they're always getting ready to begin." 

The point for Marcus was that you do it now, not later. You do it now. The Stoics believed in this idea of sympatheia, that there was this whole collective we were in. Marcus Aurelius talks about the common good dozens and dozens of times in *Meditations*. 

He believed that, yeah, he was a Roman, and yes, he was the head of the Roman Empire, but all human beings were connected, that all human beings shared an affinity in a relationship and an obligation to each other. In book 6:54, he says, "What injures the hive injures the bee. What's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. What's bad for the bee is bad for the hive." 

And this was a time of such immense cruelty and selfishness and indifference to what was happening elsewhere. And Marcus Aurelius is saying, "No, your job as a human being is to care about other human beings, not just those immediately nearest to you or related to you, but ones you'll never know, ones you’ll never meet, ones who have never even been born." 

Racism does not make you a sociopath; if anything, it makes you care more about more people. We don't know a lot about the policies that Marcus enacts. We know of a couple. One, he passes a law that makes life easier for slaves, some protections for them. 

Then another, he demands that the gladiators be given wooden swords to practice and fight with. Take a very dangerous, fatal sport, and make it not so dangerous. I like this idea of Stoicism being, at least in part, about standing up for the little guy. 

One of the things he learns from the Stoics is this idea of a society of equals, of equal laws, of a ruler who protects the rights of their subjects. I just love the idea that Marcus was talking about that in theory, and then he was in a position to do something about it. 

And he does. Not enough. None of us do enough. There’s a reminder there too. He reads Epictetus. He sees the brilliance of this slave who becomes a philosopher. 

And yeah, he makes life easier for slaves, but he never questions the institution of slavery itself. But I do generally like the idea that Marcus did his best to practice what he preached. 

In book five, Marcus Aurelius talks about the proper role of philosophy in life. He says it's not as your instructor. He says it's as a kind of medicine, an ointment. He describes a sort of ancient remedy for this illness where they would crack an egg on you or something like that. 

I think his general point he actually is taking from Epictetus, who said, "You shouldn't leave my philosophy class feeling good. You should feel like you just came out of the hospital." He says, "You weren't well when you entered." 

The point of philosophy is to challenge you. It's to make you uncomfortable. It's to fix the illnesses of the soul, of the mind. Even though there are passages of *Meditations* that are soothing and reassuring, a lot of them are jarring, a lot of them make you uncomfortable, a lot of them really make you think, or a lot of them maybe you instinctively disagree with. 

That's the point. Philosophy is not supposed to be your instructor; it's supposed to be a kind of medicine. Philosophy can feel like this impractical, inaccessible thing. What Marcus Aurelius writes in *Meditations* is that no role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you're in right now. 

He says it stares you in the face. And of course, he's talking to himself. Of course, he's talking about being emperor. But if it stares the emperor in the face—that no role is so well suited to be in philosophical as that—I think it's also true for being a janitor, for being a stay-at-home parent, for being an astronaut. Whatever it is that you do, it stares you in the face. 

Nothing is so well suited to what you're doing as this philosophy. In book 6:13, Marcus says, "The master of deception. When you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell." There's a quote from the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was not a fan of the Stoics, but he said, "The first sign of an impending nervous collapse is the belief that your work is terribly, terribly important."

It’s again a very humbling idea. Yes, Marcus Aurelius’ work was important. Yes, he wanted to do a good job at whatever he was doing, but it was just a reminder of how insidious ego is, how self-important we often feel, and how easily we get distracted again with the inessential things, the things that validate us, that make us feel special, but that don't matter at all.

A few years ago, a friend sent me an email. It came in the afternoon or the early evening on a Friday. I opened it, and then I was like, "You know what? This is like, I’ve got a lot to deal with here." And I marked it as unread and I said, "I'll get to it on Monday." And he dropped dead on a hike on Sunday. 

This is what the Stoics are talking about when they say, you know, *memento mori*, and they say, "You could leave life right now." And in one of the most haunting passages of Marcus Aurelius, he talks about how, as you tuck your child in at night, he says, "You should say to yourself, they will not make it to the morning." 

His point was meditating on the fact that this could be the last email that you get from this friend. This could be the last time you sit down to coffee. It could be the last family vacation that you ever go on—for you or for them, right? And that we can't take people or places for granted. 

I don't think Marcus is doing this exercise meditating on the loss of his child to disconnect or detach from them. The opposite. It's to connect more deeply with them, to remind himself what was truly important, which was the present moment and his other brilliant meditation on the ephemerality of life. He says, "You're afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore." 

You won't be able to wait in line at the DMV. You won't be on another stupid, pointless conference call. So much of what we spend our life doing is a complete waste. And then we say we're afraid of death. We say we feel like we don't have enough time. You do have enough time. You just have to stop wasting it. 

I was talking to someone recently who had this high-flying business. It was super successful, out of nowhere, made all sorts of money, got all sorts of wonderful public attention, and then it turned. The business failed, and suddenly they weren't held up as this business success, but as an example of a business failure. 

And I told them one of my favorite passages from Aurelius: “We're like a rock tossed in the air. We gain nothing by going up and lose nothing by coming down. None of this says anything about us as people.” He didn't gain anything by being made emperor. He wouldn't have lost by losing it. None of it, Marcus Aurelius says, means anything about us as people.

Even though Marcus Aurelius says we must avoid false friendship at all costs, even though he's betrayed by his trusted general Avidius Cassius, we know that Marcus doesn't harden his heart. He doesn't close himself off from the world. 

He's ready, as Michael Scott says, he's ready to be hurt again, right? He constantly is putting himself back out there. But he does learn from this, and he's a little more guarded going forward. He makes this analogy in *Meditations*: he says, "You know, you're in the boxing ring, and someone's cheating, maybe they're gouging or biting or scratching." 

He says, "You don't quit altogether." You just change your fight plan accordingly. This is one passage that Robert Greene quotes from *Meditations* quite often. You don't quit. You don't storm and go home, but you are aware of who you're dealing with, and you adjust accordingly. 

The short lines in *Meditations* are the best: "Discard your misperception. Stop being jerked around like a puppet. Limit yourself to the present." There are just a couple of words; they say so much and they cut through so much space and time. 

He never uses two words where one will do. He doesn't beat around the bush; he just comes out and says it. And the advice is so clear and so obvious. Try to imagine the Emperor of Rome, this man of enormous power and wealth and prestige, trying to tell himself not to be a person of too many words or too many deeds. 

Pretty remarkable that he's even at that level—talking about simplification, talking about modesty, talking about restraint. It's a beautiful thing and a very rare thing, to be sure. In *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius is constantly pointing out how few people remember the emperors who came before him. 

"Who remembers the name of Vespasian? Who remembers this person from Hadrian's court or that one? All these names are forgotten." But he's saying this to remind himself that one day the name Marcus Aurelius will sound unfamiliar. Indeed, for hundreds of years, it was. 

I mean, how many people, even watching this video, know much more about Marcus Aurelius than he was the old guy in the movie *Gladiator*, right? Even the most famous person in the world, the person they carved statues out of stone, whose name was emblazoned on buildings—so few people know of him today, and that should be a humbling reminder for all of us.

In Gregory Hayes's introduction to *Meditations*, he says, "There's an American president who rereads Marcus Aurelius every single year." Some research turned up; he was talking then about President Bill Clinton. 

Now, obviously, Bill Clinton did not get truly the message of *Meditations*, but I think the point is, how much better off would we be if every leader, every person in a position of power was familiar with Marcus Aurelius? Because he was there. 

He had that job, he had that job times a thousand, and he knew what you had to strive to do. He knew what you had to try your hardest not to do. He knew what you had to be to be great. And I think it's important that it's not just reading it once again; it's the idea of rereading it every year. 

So not just, "Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if every president, if every world leader read and reread *Meditations* every year?" We don't control that. If you reread it every year, what would you learn? What would you take out of it? Each and every time, I know that I've taken something new out of it. 

Each time I've picked up this book, as I have now for almost 15 years, every time you dip into Marcus, you take something new out of it. And that's why Bill Clinton was rereading it every year. And that's why every leader, every parent, every person should do the same. 

I have some really old copies of *Meditations* too that people have given me. Some of those so old their covers are falling off, I'm even scared to pull the pages apart—hundreds and hundreds of years old. And I think one stoic exercise you can almost imagine Marcus doing, and I think about it now even when I hold my newish copies versus my oldish copies. 

Think about who the person was that held this book 100 years ago, 200 years ago. Think about the translation that this translation is a translation of, is a translation of. And you start to get far back pretty fast. And you wonder where those people are. They're gone. They're gone forever. Just as someday we will be gone forever—and maybe someone will get your used copy at a library sale or a garage sale, or it'll be passed down. 

Your kids, their kids, their kids. None of us are here forever in a lot of different places. In *Meditations*, Marcus meditates on how these old familiar names are no longer so familiar. And these people who were once powerful and super well-known—nobody knows who they are. 

Think about all the famous people that have owned *Meditations*. They're nowhere, as you and I will someday be. The one prophecy that never fails, as they say. And Marcus knows that for all his power, for all his fame, for all his brilliance, he’s not an exception to that rule. 

His memory might live on forever, but he knows posthumous fame isn't really worth anything. It says, "Focus on what you can now, be present. You're not exempt from anything. You're a regular person." Eventually, you'll find yourself on your deathbed, and it may well be sooner than you would like it to be. Such is life. 

One of my favorite passages in *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius talks about washing off the dust of earthly life. I think studying philosophy is a way to do that. Going for a walk is a way to do that. The Romans would have done that in the bathhouse. 

We can imagine Marcus after a day of hearing cases or meetings. He would have been dirty, literally and figuratively. And he would have walked to a bathhouse, a gymnasium, and he would have cleaned himself there. He would have gotten in a cold plunge or a thermal pool. 

In fact, at a Quin come, where Marcus writes a chunk of *Meditations*, you can step in one of those pools. It's still running today. There's something beautiful and timeless about that, and I think very practical about the reminder of washing off the dust of earthly life, literally and metaphorically. 

It was funny; I was going through my copy of *Meditations* many years ago, and I found inside a receipt. It was for Borders in Riverside, California. The store doesn't exist anymore. And then I realized it wasn't my name, my credit card on the receipt; it was my wife's. 

And I realized that shortly after my wife and I had met, I had just read *Meditations*, and she went and bought that copy. That was something we shared and talked about. And this copy's still there with us. I'll show you a picture of it. 

But Marcus Aurelius himself is changed by a book, remember? His philosophy teacher Rusticus gives him a copy of Epictetus and they bond over it. Books can change our lives. They can connect us with other people. They can be with us for years, decades. 

I think there's something to be said in *Meditations*, but then also in my copy of *Meditations* about the singular power of a book to bring people together. There's an immense amount of control or influence the translator has, or how they choose to use this word or that word. And that can mean a world of difference. 

But also, like when you just get the crappy translation that's in the public domain or the cheapest one on Amazon, like you're selling yourself short. I feel so lucky I got the Hayes translation early. The point is, books are an investment. You shouldn't cheap out. 

You shouldn't get the cheapest one; you should get the one that's right, that's best. And there's a reason these things cost money—it's that they're worth money. My life would have been totally different had I gotten a crappier translation, a cheaper translation. If I said, "I'll just get it from the library; I'll skim through, and I'll give it back." 

No, reading is an investment. Books are an investment and you have to invest accordingly. I was once having a conversation with the great Robert Greene about the Stoics, and he showed me his copy of Marcus Aurelius’s *Meditations*. And he would write in the margins little notes. 

AF stood for amor fati. Amor fati actually comes to us from Nietzsche, who was not a particularly big fan of the Stoics but expressed something, I think, at the core of Stoicism. He said, "Not just to bear what is necessary or accept it since you must love it." Amor fati—a love of one's fate. 

And it was Robert who made this explicit connection between Stoicism and amor fati, which I've popularized in Daily Stoic and our videos. My book Robert and I even made this coin, which I carry with me everywhere. It has that picture of a fire. 

Marcus Aurelius, again, remember saying that what you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire. The fire loves what you're throwing in there. So I just love that idea. And I'm so indebted to Robert for helping me see this connection between two wildly different philosophical schools of thought, but finding this one area where they converge.

One passage I marked down in *Meditations* when I first read it, Marcus Aurelius says, "Go straight to the seat of intelligence." Writing and reading require a master. So too his light. Mentors have been a huge guiding force in my life—Robert Greene, others. If you don't have a mentor, if you don't have a teacher, if you don't have the kinds of people that Marcus is thanking in the Debts and Lessons section of *Meditations*, you're not going to become what you're capable of becoming. 

You're not going to become anything like Marcus Aurelius. The remarkable thing about *Meditations* is that it's really a book for the writer, not for the reader. It's not for you and me. Marcus might even be mortified that we're here talking about him because he never intended to publish it. 

The point of *Meditations* was his own practice. He was writing to himself, writing notes to himself. The book accomplished what it was set out to accomplish before it was read by anyone else, let alone, you know, 2,000 years later, that it's still helping people. 

And you have to have that kind of journaling practice in your life. I think: How are you meditating on these things? How are you talking to yourself about them? What's the internal dialogue or debate or interrogation process that you have in your life helping you be what you're capable of being and who you're capable of being? 

Marcus Aurelius had a lot to complain about. He’s betrayed, he’s misled. People lie to him; people try to take things from him. He has a job that he doesn't even want. And yet, nowhere in *Meditations*, what he thinks is his private diary that no one is going to read, do we ever once see him complain about any of this. 

He doesn't complain about being unappreciated. He doesn't complain about being abused. He doesn't complain about being put upon. He doesn't complain about the stress because as he says in *Meditations*, we should never be overheard complaining—not even to ourselves.

"Concentrate like a Roman," Marcus says. Concentrate on doing the thing in front of you as if it was the last thing you were doing in your life. I think about that pretty often—that it could be the last time you send this email, it could be the last time you have this conversation; it could be the last time that I sit down to write or that I sit down to make a video. 

So am I going to be fully present? Am I gonna concentrate? Am I gonna do my job? Am I gonna meet the standards of my people, of my profession, my history? I've got to concentrate like a Roman. I'm going to do it like this thing matters, like I might not get another opportunity to do it. To me, that's the test—that's the standard to try to meet every day that you are lucky enough to be alive.

Marcus Aurelius is clearly very strict with himself. *Meditations* is one rule admonishment, almost impossible standard that he's setting for himself after. And yet, we're told by historians the brilliance of Marcus is that his strictness was limited solely to himself—tolerant with others, strict with yourself. 

Conscious of the fact that it's called self-discipline for a reason. You control yourself; you control the standards you set for yourself. But you have to be tolerant and understanding of other people. In another part of *Meditations*, he chastises himself for not being a better forgiver of faults. 

And that's what we have to cultivate; this practice should make us better, also, and were forgiving and tolerant of other people. Marcus Aurelius, hero of heroes, as Antoninus, his adopted stepfather, as far as we know, Antoninus Pius doesn’t write anything down. He writes no works of Stoic philosophy. 

He probably wouldn't have even identified as a Stoic or as a philosopher. And yet, to Marcus, he was the embodiment of both Stoicism and philosophy. He was clearly naturally this way. And I suspect some people naturally are. I think we can deduce that because Marcus did have to write this book; Marcus wasn't naturally this way. 

He was struggling like you and I are struggling. He was trying to get there. He needed the extra help. And it is inevitable that we will fall short, which is why in *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius says to pick yourself back up when you fall. But he also says to celebrate the fact that you're a human being. 

What matters, he says, is that you come back to the rhythm of it. Right? We're going to be jarred by circumstances. We're going to be messed up. We're going to slip on our diet, on our New Year’s resolution, on the goal we have. That's okay. What matters is that you get back up. 

What matters is that more often than not, you stick to it, that you always come back home to it. In one passage, he goes, "It's unfortunate that this happened." Then he catches himself and goes, "No, it's fortunate that it happened to you." 

And we think about all the things that happened to Marcus Aurelius in his life—plagues, war, flooding. He loses children. He has a troublesome son. People think his wife is cheating on him. It's one thing after another. But he doesn't run from any of this. He doesn't hide from it. He doesn't throw himself a pity party. 

Even though he felt sorry for himself in that minute, he always saw it as an opportunity. He rose to the occasion. One ancient historian would say that Marcus doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved, but then he says, "But I admired him all the more for that," because he preserved himself and the Empire despite these extraordinary circumstances. 

That's what greatness is. That's what the obstacle is. The Way is really about. Several points in *Meditations*, Marcus Aurelius summarizes what are in effect the three disciplines of Stoicism that you need to know. 

Always perception—how we see things. What part of this is in my control? What isn't? What is it actually? How do I see it as clearly as possible? Then the next step: it's what are you gonna do about it? What action can you take? Then the third part is the will—the fortitude, the strength, the perseverance that you bring to bear on that problem.

Obstacle, situation, perception, action, will. That's the essence of Stoic philosophy, which Marcus organizes *Meditations* around and returns to repeatedly, over and over again. 

Marcus Aurelius would have been cheered everywhere he went. There would have been parades. He's given a Roman triumph. He built statues of him. They flatter him, and every room is. He's the most important person there. Yet he has this remarkable way of describing all of that—that clapping is the smacking of hands. 

He says that cheering is the clacking of tongues. Doing that contemptuous expression that we talk about, the idea that this stuff doesn't matter. Let's see it as it actually is. Don't just take it for granted that a standing ovation says something special about you. That obviously being all these people talking about you is important. 

Think about what it actually is. Think about what it actually represents. Break it down and see it in this skeptical, almost cynical light, and it loses its power over you. Obviously, Marcus is an idealist. Obviously, he's a perfectionist. 

Obviously, he wants to be good, and he wants other people to be good. Yet he's also pragmatic; he's also realistic. He says in *Meditations*: "Don't go around expecting Plato's Republic." Cicero says of Cato that he acted as if he lived in Plato's Republic instead of the dregs of Romulus. 

Obviously, you want to be good despite what is happening in the outside world. But you can't also expect perfection or a utopia because we don't live there. You have to be pragmatic and realistic and practical, or you're just setting yourself up to be disappointed. 

You're setting yourself up to have your heart broken, which is what Marcus is preparing against. At the beginning of *Meditations*, like we talked about, he says, "The people you are going to meet are annoying, jealous, frustrating, mean—all of that." Not the things in Plato's Republic. You gotta be ready. 

You gotta expect those things. Not only can you not expect Plato's Republic, you have to deal with the place that you're in. You've got to make practical decisions based on what you're in. He says, "If the cucumber is bitter, throw it out." 

He says, "If there are brambles in the path, go around. Don't despair, don't be mad, don't wish it was otherwise. Just get to work; start where you are with what you have, and build from there." 

Almost every smart person that's ever lived has loved reading. They love books. They lose themselves in books. And yet why does he write at the beginning of *Meditations* that he needs to stop reading to throw away his books? 

Well, it's because any virtue taken too far can be a vice, right? Marcus Aurelius probably loved diving into his books because his books were simpler than the job that he had. His philosophy texts were cleaner and clearer than the complicated moral ambiguities of life. 

He was saying that a philosopher has to be a doer, not just a thinker. And in fact, the Stoics didn’t like what they called the pen-and-ink philosophers—the people who were just readers; they weren't doers. It's good advice. It's wonderful to read, and you should read as much as possible, but you can't live in there. 

You have to live in the real world. You can imagine that as the Emperor of Rome, people had a lot of strong opinions about Marcus. They thought he was the best in the world; they thought he was the worst in the world. They thought he sucked; they thought he was amazing. 

He would have been bombarded with opinions about him. He has to not think about it; he has to set his own standards. He has to keep his own inner scorecard. He says at one point in *Meditations*, "The perks of his job is you can earn a bad reputation by doing good deeds." 

Think of someone like Harry Truman who makes a bunch of momentous, critical, probably the correct decisions, but he leaves office one of the least popular presidents in American history. That's what Marcus is talking about; people have strong opinions about what you do, but you have to set your own standards, your own scorecard, and you have to do the right thing because it's the right thing—not because it's going to make you popular. 

Or conversely, not concerned whether it might make you unpopular. Objective judgment, now at this very moment; unselfish action, now at this very moment; willing acceptance, now at this very moment, he says—all that you need. 

That's the formula for turning an obstacle upside down. First, you have to see it clearly. Second, you have to focus on what's possible; what you can do for others here. And third, you have to accept the parts of it that are outside your control. 

You have to bring a kind of fortitude and strength to it: perception, action, will. That's all you need. I was lucky enough actually to interview Gregory Hayes, the translator of these two books, way back in 2007. And I asked him what his favorite passage in *Meditations* was, and he said this, and I’ll read to you. 

He said, "Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone, those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river, what is in constant flux. Time has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of the past and future gapes before us, a chasm whose depths we cannot see." 

I probably missed the brilliance of that until I saw him read it, but it stuck with me ever since. And actually, when we illustrated this edition of *Meditations*, I tried to capture that—that time flows like a river, and you just think of it rushing past you. Think of Marcus Aurelius writing it near the Danube. 

Water is clearly this repeated metaphor and analogy in the Stoics, and it can teach us so much. And most of all, I think it can both humble and inspire us. Marcus Aurelius talks about being jarred by circumstances, messing up, failing, talks about the idea of a rhythm coming back to the rhythm. 

And I like this idea. I think Stoics talk about the logos, or the way you think of the logos, the kind of rhythm of the universe being the way something you come back. So even if you screw up, it’s always there. The metronome is always there. The rhythm of the music is always there. You want to come back to it. 

Like a lot of people, I have a tendency to overwork, to overdo, to overcommit, take things too intensely. Marcus Aurelius warns himself against this in *Meditations*, and it’s stuck with me always. 

He says in your actions, don’t procrastinate; in your conversations, don’t confuse; in your thoughts, don’t wander; in your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business, right? Don't be all about business. 

If you want tranquility, you have to do less. It's about doing less; it's about saying no more. The question we have to ask ourselves constantly is, is this essential? Because most of what we do and say is not essential. 

And when you eliminate the inessential, he says that's good in and of itself. But secondarily, you get the benefit of doing the essential things better. You have to say no; you have to say no multiple times. 

Marcus used a word that I totally missed. For instance, to move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind—only their delight and stillness. Stillness is a very Eastern word, but it also has roots in the Stoics of apatheia, ataraxia. 

This idea for the Stoics of not being disturbed by external circumstances, by internal circumstances—not caring what other people say, not caring what other people do. Get into a place of stillness. This is clearly what Marcus was studying philosophy for and where he wanted to get. 

Stillness, though, is this idea that Marcus returns to over and over and over again, probably because he had so little stillness in his busy, chaotic, crazy life. He wants to be like the rock that the wave crashes over, and eventually, the sea falls still around. I think of that metaphor all the time. 

The world is going to be crazy; all these things are happening. But what you can have is a certain kind of strength and stillness. And inner fortitude is the ability to be calm amid the turbulence, to be still even as the world is spinning around you. 

Everything lasts for a day: the knower and the known. This is a pretty interesting observation from a man who was the most famous man in the world at that time, a man who's still so famous you can buy coins with his face on them on Etsy. They survive as historical documents worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. 

This is a guy whose book still pops on and off the bestseller list, whose search engines show have an all-time spike in popularity. But Marcus Aurelius would also remind himself that posthumous fame isn’t really worth anything. 

He’s not around to enjoy it. What matters is, was he deserving of that in his own time? Was he good then? Is he famous for the right reasons, for doing good stuff, for being a good person? 

So we can imagine when Marcus comes to the end of life and realizes he's gonna die, I wonder if he thought about the passage that he wrote in book ten: "It doesn't matter how good a life you've led, there will still be people standing around the bed who will welcome the sad event." 

His point was, if you're doing this for validation, if you're doing this to be loved, you're doing this to be remembered—the rewards for doing the right thing have to be the right thing. 

You can’t be doing it to be liked; you can't care about what other people think. You can't try to please everyone all the time and be everyone's favorite, especially as a leader. 

Especially as a leader. So Marcus had to constantly be aware of this. And I wondered if when he actually came to the end of his life, if he thought about the fact that maybe secretly some of these people were glad he would be gone soon, and if he had to come to terms with those words that he’d written so long ago. 

In book four of *Meditations*, this is 4:37, he says, "On the verge of dying, and you're still weighed down, still turbulent, still convinced that external things can harm you, still rude to other people, still not acknowledging the truth—that wisdom is justice." 

I just love the intensity with which he's addressing himself. Marcus again isn’t perfect. He's still struggling with it. He's saying, "It's the end of your life, and you still haven't gotten this right." And he's repeating to himself who he wants to be, how he should be. 

And I think—and this is the important part—he's also saying it's not too late; it's never too late. It's funny; Marcus is, I think, meditating on *memento mori* to root himself in the present moment. And you do notice that Marcus talks about the present moment over and over and over again in *Meditations*. 

He's reminding himself that it's the only thing you have; it's the only thing you can lose. I think that's because he, like us, found it so easy to get distracted, to think about the past or the future, to worry about this, to regret that. 

And the consequence of that is you’re losing the only thing you have. He's saying, which is right now—the fruit of this life. Marcus says at one point in *Meditations*: "Good character and acts for the common good." Elsewhere, he talks about those epithets for the self. 

Those are two pretty good ones, right? That you should be good character always, and do good things for other people always. And to Marcus, that's what he was striving to do—always good character, good deeds. 

It's hard to come up with a better summation for a good life than that. There's a pretty amazing story about Marcus. It's pretty late in life; he's seen leaving his palace in Rome and he's carrying these tablets, and a friend says, "Where are you going?" 

He says, "I'm off to see Sextus, the philosopher, to learn that which I do not yet know." The friend marvels. He says, "Here’s the most powerful man in the world, even as an old age, picking up his books and going to school!" 

I think that’s, in effect, what Marcus is. He remains a student. It's his notebook; it's his exercise book; it's his workbook. He's doing work on himself even as an