Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Aaron Poochigian
“Can you really not see the many qualities you could start displaying right now? You have no excuse—no natural inadequacy or inaptitude, and you still chose to keep on coming up short on them.” Sounds like something from a new self-help book but it’s an ancient piece of advice, circa AD 170 by Marcus Aurelius. He was a Roman emperor, less remembered for his conquests than his philosophy. His writings have come down to us in a slim book called Meditations, out now in a new translation by Aaron Poochigian.
Aurelius was a Stoic, devoted to a philosophy born in Athens but nurtured in Rome. He wrote his Meditations in Greek, a more philosophical language than his native Latin and better able to express his thoughts. Poochigian is aware of the different “voices” in which Aurelius wrote. The emperor posed as a knowing instructor, a vulnerable aspirant and a strawman “objector.”
Stoicism runs contrary to the rampant emotionalism of our time. It espouses modesty and restraint, curbing outbursts in favor of capable management of the situations we encounter. Put simply, don’t worry about what you can’t control but control what you can. Poochigian believes that Aurelius actually practiced a form of meditation with that inner work in service to what he translates as the “human commonwealth.”
A Stoic maxim for our time? “You fear change? What could possibly happen in this world without some change being involved?” Aurelius wrote.
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