"Just as we commonly hear people say the doctor prescribed some one particular riding exercises, or ice baths, or walking without shoes, we should in the same way say that nature prescribed someone to be diseased, or disabled, or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.8
Personal note: This is a hard one. It sounds suspiciously like it is saying that a person deserves or even needs any apparent hardships that befall. One needs to really understand a number of aspects of Stoic philosophy to appreciate what this is really talking about. If one accepts that virtue is the only true good, and vice the only true evil, it follows that pain, disease, etc. are not true evils. They are not preferred, but they are not truly bad things. Furthermore, if one accepts the concept of providence - the idea that the universe is divinely inspired and divinely ordered - then apparent hardships (e.g., illness) that befall someone are not actually bad, and were divinely appointed besides. It is very uncomfortable to tell someone who feels that they are suffering that their pain is not real pain, and that they deserve it anyway! But this is not really what Stoicism teaches, or what Marcus is saying. But he is saying that what happens to a person happens, and cannot be altered after the fact - what has been appointed by fate cannot be altered. It is ordered to aid our destiny, in that sense. And while it is not so much that our suffering was sent to teach us a lesson, the Stoic would certainly say that we can choose to learn from "dispreferred" events. In short, I feel like this one is very easy to misunderstand and misinterpret if one is not deeply steeped in Stoicism - I'll post it anyway, but it's not for beginners!
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