Stoic Week 2015 Friday Morning Reflection

Text for Morning Reflection: "Say to yourself first thing in the morning: I shall meet with people who are meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable. They are subject to these faults because of their ignorance of what is good and bad. But I have recognized the nature of the good and seen that it is the right, and the nature of the bad and seen that it is the wrong, and the nature of the wrongdoer himself, and seen that he is related to me, not because he has the same blood or seed, but because he shares in the same mind and portion of divinity. So I cannot be harmed by any of them, as no one will involve me in what is wrong. Nor can I be angry with my relative or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work against each other is contrary to nature; and resentment and rejection count as working against someone."

 — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1

Anyone who knows me well has probably heard me recite at least part of this passage before; it is one of my favorite passages in the whole of the Meditations, and has been the only thing that seemed to help me get through some days that seemed hard because my perception of indifferents was flawed!

Stoic Week 2015 Thursday Evening Reflection

Text for Evening Reflection: "Every habit and faculty is formed or strengthened by the corresponding act — walking makes you walk better, running makes you a better runner. If you want to be literate, read, if you want to be a painter, paint. Go a month without reading, occupied with something else, and you’ll see what the result is. And if you’re laid up a mere ten days, when you get up and try to talk any distance, you’ll find your legs barely able to support you. So if you like doing something, do it regularly; if you don’t like doing something, make a habit of doing something different. The same goes for the affairs of the mind… So if you don’t want to be hot-tempered, don’t feed your temper, or multiply incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry, then begin to count the days on which you don’t get angry. ‘I used to be angry every day, then only every other day, then every third…’ If you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one, until it is wiped out altogether. ‘I didn’t lose my temper this day, or the next, and not for two, then three months in succession.’ If you can say that, you are now in excellent health, believe me."

 — Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18

Stoic Week 2015 Thursday Morning Reflection

Text for Morning Reflection: "If you find anything in human life better than justice, truthfulness, self-control, courage… turn to it with all your heart and enjoy the supreme good that you have found… but if you find all other things to be trivial and valueless in comparison with virtue give no room to anything else, since once you turn towards that and divert from your proper path, you will no longer be able without inner conflict to give the highest honour to that which is properly good. It is not right to set up as a rival to the rational and social good [virtue] anything alien its nature, such as the praise of the many or positions of power, wealth or enjoyment of pleasures."

 — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.6

Stoic Week 2015 Wednesday Evening Reflection

Texts for Evening Reflection: "Get rid of the judgement and you have got rid of the idea. ‘I have been harmed’; get rid of the idea, ‘I have been harmed’, and you have got rid of the harm itself."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.7


"All turns on judgement, and that is up to you. So when you want to do this, get rid of the judgement, and then, as though you had passed the headland, the sea will be calm and all will be still, and there won’t be a wave in the bay."
 — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.22

Stoic Week 2015 Wednesday Morning Reflection

Text for Morning Reflection: "People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills; and you too are especially inclined to feel this desire. But this is altogether unphilosophical, when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself at any time you want. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind, especially if he has within himself the kind of thoughts that let him dip into them and so at once gain complete ease of mind; and by ease of mind, I mean nothing but having one’s own mind in good order. So constantly give yourself this retreat and renew yourself. You should have to hand concise and fundamental principles, which will be enough, as soon as you encounter them, to cleanse you from all distress and send you back without resentment at the activities to which you return. "

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 1.3.1-3

Stoic Week 2015 Tuesday Evening Reflection

Text for Reflection: "Try to persuade them; and act even against their will, whenever the principle of justice leads you to do so. But if someone uses force to resist you, change your approach to accepting it and not being hurt, and use the setback to express another virtue. Remember too that your motive was formed with reservation and that you were not aiming at the impossible. At what then? A motive formed with reservation. But you have achieved this; what we proposed to ourselves is actually happening."

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.50

Stoic Week 2015 Tuesday Morning Reflection

Text for Morning Reflection: "Early in the morning, when you are finding it hard to wake up, hold this thought in your mind: ‘I am getting up to do the work of a human being. Do I still resent it, if I am going out to do what I was born for and for which I was brought into the world? Or was I framed for this, to lie under the bedclothes and keep myself warm?’ ‘But this is more pleasant’. So were you born for pleasure: in general were you born for feeling or for affection? Don’t you see the plants, the little sparrows, the ants, the spiders, the bees doing their own work, and playing their part in making up an ordered world. And then are you unwilling to do the work of a human being? Won’t you run to do what is in line with your nature?"

 — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.1