Meditations

Marcus Aurelius was not writing for you. These are notes to himself, repetitive on purpose, working the same few ideas over and over because he kept failing to live by them. That framing changes what the book is. Read as advice it sounds serene and slightly smug. Read as a record of someone repeatedly reminding himself not to be angry, not to fear death, not to care about reputation, it reads as evidence that he was angry, afraid and vain, like everyone else. Modern Stoicism tends to extract the calm and drop the struggle. The repetition is the honest part. What is the passage you have returned to more than once, and did it work the second time?