If you’re new around here, welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays - where I share wisdom from history’s greatest minds.
Happy New Year, friends!
I hope you’ve rested well this holiday, loved deeply, and forgiven those who wronged you.
By the way, none of the above are simple tasks. But they are necessary for living a good life.
As you reflect on 2024, consider this question: What defines true success?
Many of us equate success with material gains, power, acquisitions, and social status. Yet these measures are transient, like mist in the early morning—here one moment and gone the next. They miss what matters most.
And Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, knew this well. He achieved a level of power, status, and wealth that very few humans will ever attain.
Despite his material success, Aurelius saw past this veil of illusion.
Aurelius recognized that true success is not gaining power over others, increasing his wealth, or expanding his dominion.
True success is who we become in this life, how we shape our character through adversity, temptations, and suffering. Did we become more virtuous? He knew that it was only our character that we take with us beyond death.
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.”
Aurelius measured success by how well he lived this life, and whether he aligned his heart’s desire with what is good and true.
At the top of the mountain of worldly success, he apprehended this truth we often forget:
Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings. Follow God.
Meaning: live detached from the fruits of our actions. Love deeply and unselfishly. Forgive others. Commit right action. Follow the God.
Lessons from Marcus Aurelius
There are three ingredients to good fortune. I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.
To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness.
Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretence.
Live today as if it’s your first and last day. Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow “or the day after.” Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.
Don’t give up. Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.
Resilience is the key. To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.
Live in wisdom. Nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure. The same thing happens to other people, and they weather it unharmed—out of sheer obliviousness or because they want to display “character”. Is wisdom really so much weaker than ignorance and vanity?
Till next week,
Peace!
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