Meditations

A Roman emperor’s private journal, never meant for publication. That’s what makes Meditations so powerful—these are genuine reflections, not performances. Marcus Aurelius wrote these notes to himself while leading military campaigns, managing a vast empire, and facing personal tragedy. The raw honesty of someone talking to himself across two millennia creates an intimacy that polished philosophy rarely achieves.

Why I Keep Returning to This Book

I’ve read Meditations perhaps fifteen times now. Each reading lands differently depending on where I am in life. When I first encountered it at nineteen, it felt like ancient wisdom—interesting but distant. At twenty-five, struggling with my first serious failures, the passages on acceptance suddenly became urgent and practical. Now I read it less for answers and more for companionship: here is someone who faced chaos, responsibility, and mortality, and found a way to maintain his center.

The book doesn’t argue. It doesn’t try to convince. It simply shows a mind working through the same problems we all face—how to act well when circumstances are difficult, how to maintain composure when everything feels urgent, how to keep perspective when the immediate crowds out the important.

The Practice of Stoicism

Stoicism as practiced in Meditations isn’t the cold emotional suppression people often imagine. It’s closer to a kind of cognitive therapy—a systematic practice of questioning your initial reactions, examining your judgments, and deliberately choosing your responses rather than being controlled by circumstance.

The core insight is that between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Marcus returns to this idea constantly, in different phrasings:

“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”

This isn’t denial. Marcus doesn’t suggest that pain isn’t real or that injustice doesn’t matter. He’s making a subtler point: our judgments about events cause us more suffering than the events themselves. The event happens, then we add a story about what it means, and that story is where most of our distress lives.

I’ve found this practically useful in countless situations. Someone cuts me off in traffic—my heart rate rises, I feel a flash of anger. Then I notice: the event is over. The danger has passed. What’s creating this ongoing disturbance is my mental narrative about disrespect and carelessness. That narrative is optional.

Mortality and Impermanence

Marcus returns obsessively to death—not morbidly, but as a tool for perspective. He reminds himself constantly that he will die, that everything he’s worried about will be forgotten, that the people he admires are now dust.

This sounds depressing but functions as liberation. When I remember that I won’t be here in a hundred years, most of my anxieties reveal themselves as trivial. The presentation that feels so high-stakes? I won’t remember it in a decade, let alone care about it from the grave.

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”

This isn’t nihilism—it’s prioritization. If time is limited, what actually matters? Not the opinion of people I’ll never see again. Not the minor frustrations that dominate an average day. Not the status games that consume so much energy.

What remains when you strip away the trivial? Connection with people you love. Work that engages you fully. Moments of genuine presence. The basics, it turns out, but we spend most of our lives distracted from them.

Dealing with Difficult People

Some of the most practical passages address how to handle difficult people—a concern as relevant now as in second-century Rome.

Marcus’s approach isn’t to write people off or avoid them. It’s to recognize that difficult behavior comes from ignorance or different values, and that we ourselves have been difficult to others. He asks himself: “Have you never done something similar?” Usually the honest answer is yes.

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”

This framing is remarkably effective. When I expect difficulty, I’m not thrown off balance by it. When I remember that difficult behavior comes from ignorance rather than malice, I can respond with patience rather than outrage.

The goal isn’t to become a doormat but to choose responses wisely rather than react automatically. Sometimes the right response is confrontation. Sometimes it’s distance. But it should be chosen, not triggered.

The Duty of Public Service

Marcus was an emperor who clearly would have preferred a quiet philosophical life. Yet he takes duty seriously throughout Meditations, reminding himself that humans are social creatures meant to serve their community.

“What injures the hive injures the bee.”

This has become more relevant to me as I’ve taken on more responsibility. There’s a temptation, especially for introverts, to retreat into private concerns and intellectual pursuits. Marcus refuses this temptation while acknowledging its appeal. We have obligations to each other, and fulfilling them is part of living well, not an obstacle to it.

What Marcus Got Wrong

No ancient text should be swallowed whole. Marcus’s Stoicism sometimes tips into excessive self-denial. He disparages physical pleasures in ways that seem unnecessarily harsh. He occasionally sounds like he’s beating himself up rather than practicing healthy self-improvement.

The social context matters too. Marcus was an emperor with absolute power; his advice about accepting what you cannot control lands differently when you actually can change things but are encouraged to accept them instead. Stoicism can become a tool for justifying passivity in the face of injustice.

Additionally, the emphasis on self-reliance and emotional self-regulation doesn’t adequately address our interdependence. Modern psychology shows that connection with others isn’t just pleasant—it’s necessary for mental health. Marcus’s self-sufficiency, taken too far, can become isolation.

I take what’s useful and leave the rest.

The Translation Question

A word on translations: they matter enormously for this book. I prefer Gregory Hays’s translation for its clarity and accessibility, but there’s value in reading multiple versions. Some translators emphasize the philosophical precision; others aim for literary beauty; still others try to capture the rough, personal quality of the original.

The book wasn’t meant to be polished. It’s notes, reminders, self-exhortations. Translations that smooth this out lose something essential.

How It Changed Me

I can’t claim Meditations has made me a Stoic sage. I still get angry at trivial frustrations. I still worry about things I can’t control. I still get pulled into status games and petty concerns.

But the gap between stimulus and response is a little wider now. I notice my reactions more often. I question my judgments more regularly. When facing genuine difficulty, I hear Marcus’s voice asking: “Is this really so terrible, or is it just your judgment that makes it so?”

That shift in perspective—from victim of circumstance to observer of my own reactions—is subtle but profound. It doesn’t eliminate difficulty, but it changes my relationship with it.

Meditations doesn’t offer comfort. It offers tools. And after two thousand years, those tools still work.