Alexia Dominique Reyes

I first read Meditations over two years ago, if I remember correctly. But I think that the one I read back then was a shorter edition and much easier to understand. It doesn't matter.

So, he mentioned many times that we keep worrying about what other people think of us, and we shouldn't be. But he also mentioned that we shouldn't go against our nature. Now, here's the thing: Marcus Aurelius existed many centuries ago, and people-pleasing was already an "issue" at the time. If people back then and people now share a similar trait (in this case, people-pleasing), is it sensible to say that "people-pleasing" is part of human nature? If so, then why is it an issue? Why go against it?

I see "human nature" as something that exists in all people regardless of time. I mean, it existed in the Neanderthals and ancient Greeks, and it exists in myself and everyone at this time. If people back then were people-pleasers and people today are people-pleasers, is "people-pleasing" part of human nature? Then why avoid it, or fix it? In many philosophies, why does "human nature" oftentimes refer only to positive human nature, and then anything negative is bad and must be fixed?

But what is positive, and what is negative? Those are big questions in philosophy, too! And I am not questioning philosophers. I am just wondering! Some highlights below:

• "People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time, even when hard at work."
• "The sin committed out of pleasure deserves a harsher rebuke than the one committed out of pain. The angry man is more like a victim of wrongdoing, provoked by pain to anger. The other man rushes into wrongdoing on his own, moved to action by desire."
• "The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can't lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don't have?"
• "People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out."
• "Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was, no better and no worse."
• "Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, 'Is this necessary?' But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow."
• "Nothing that goes on in anyone else's mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you. Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine. Let the part of you that makes that judgment keep quiet even if the body it's attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinking with pus, or consumed by cancer."
• "Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on."
• "To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they're human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you'll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven't really hurt you. They haven't diminished your ability to choose."
• "Treat what you don't have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you'd crave them if you didn't have them. But be careful. Don't feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them, that it would upset you to lose them."
• "Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly."
• "Remember that to change your mind and to accept correction are free acts too. The action is yours, based on your own will, your own decision, and your own mind."
• "External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them, which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your own character, who's stopping you from setting your mind straight? And if it's that you're not doing something you think you should be, why not just do it?"
• "You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves."
• "The existence of evil does not harm the world. And an individual act of evil does not harm the victim. Only one person is harmed by it, and he can stop being harmed as soon as he decides to."
• "When you run up against someone else's shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don't ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them."
• "To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one."
• "Learn to ask of all actions, 'Why are they doing that?' Starting with your own."
• "To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. This is how we learn: by looking at each thing, both the parts and the whole. Keeping in mind that none of them can dictate how we perceive it. They don't impose themselves on us. They hover before us, unmoving. It is we who generate the judgments, inscribing them on ourselves. And we don't have to. We could leave the page blank, and if a mark slips through, erase it instantly."
• "That you've made enough mistakes yourself. You're just like them. Even if there are some you've avoided, you have the potential. Even if cowardice has kept you from them. Or fear of what people would say. Or some equally bad reason."
• "To expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It's to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant."
• "We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."

Stoicism is my favorite ISM in the social sciences because life is tough, but we must be tougher!