Notes from Meditations

Wow. I found this in my drafts folder. I thought I had posted more about Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. I guess not.

It strikes me that since I read Meditations that Ai has been creeping more and more into our lives and even our minds. In the year or so that I read Meditations, Ai has become part of our everyday lives. Nothing has changed in humans since the times of Aurelius. The mind and the power of a single thought remain the origin for all the best things we have done. And the worst of course, but then you can’t have one without the other. Meditations is a warning, to me at least, that giving even one original, unique thought away to an external source is at best a waste, and at worst, terrifying. As for me, I hope we never give up our ability to use our own minds in exchange for the slight of hand of convenience and someone’s else’s financial gain.

Writing down things is always a good way fix them in your mind
all the thoughts and feelings that disrupt the tranquility are generated by one’s own mind and can therefore be dispelled by one’s own mind
Most people mistakenly think what is good for them is pleasure (ease, convenience)
you dishonor yourself and make your happiness depend on the souls of others
the only life anyone loses is this one, the one he’s living and the only life anyone lives is the one he loses
when figs are fully ripe, they split open, and in the case of ripe olives the very fact that they are on the verge of rotting gives the fruit a specific kind of beauty.
you have to exclude everything purposeless and random from the sequence of your thoughts
there’s no retreat more peaceful and untroubled than a man’s own mind
the universe is change, and life a supposition
see how, agitated by vain projects, each of them failed to act in harmony with his own nature
So spend this fleeting moment of time living in accord with nature, and take your leave with serenity, as a ripe olive might fall, blessing the earth that bore it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth
the earth which has supplied my food and drink day after day for so many years-the earth which bears me as I trample it and abuse it in so many ways
a man who’s done good doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but goes on to the next good deed, as vine goes on to bear grapes again in its season
it’s frightening then, that ignorance and obsequiousness are stronger than wisdom
“Once I was a lucky man, wherever I was to be found”
a modest respect for your own mind won’t only make you happy with yourself, but also congenial to others and in harmony with the Gods
the mind is indifferent to all activity except what it is currently engaged on