If a person could develop peace within himself, then the whole world could be at war, and he could still think well, work well and be well, no matter who he was or what he was going through.

The same thing is available to you within your soul. Marcus Aurélio would like to remind you that there is peace that you can take refuge in whenever you want, you just need to refrain from trying to control what is external to you, what you cannot control. Because peace is in what you can control, in what is in your mind, in your way of perceiving the world. If we aspire to power, this is the kind we aspire to. If we want to lead, start leading ourselves first.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, say to your soul: "I have to work as a human being. What do I have to complain about if I'm going to do what I was born to do? The things I was brought into this world to do ." Or was it to snuggle under the blankets and stay warm that I was raised? But here it's cooler, it can arise in your mind's desires. Thenagainst of thisthought, if you succumb the laziness, you were born to feel good, to indulge, instead of doing things you need to do and experiencing them.

Do you see the plants, the birds, the ants, the spiders, and the bees doing their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best they can, and you are not willing to do your job as a human being? Why don't you run to do what your nature demands? But we have to sleep sometime, we agree, but nature has set a limit to that, just as she did to eating and drinking, and you have crossed the limit. You've had more than enough of that, but not of working. Okay, you're still under your quota. You don't love yourself enough or you would also love your nature and what it demands of you.

People who love what they do burn out doing it. They even forget to wash or eat. Have you less respect for your own nature than the engraver has for engraving and the dancer for dance? When they are truly possessed by what they do, they would rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is helping others less valuable to you and not worth your effort in every way?

The cards were stacked against Epictetus 2,000 years ago in Hierapolis. He was born into slavery, not even given a name. "Epictetus" just means acquired. He was tortured; the fruits of their labor were stolen; his body was abused, like a horse ridden to the ground and then slaughtered. He was later unjustly exiled. He experienced unimaginable hardships and difficulties, but he triumphed because Epictetus did not see his life as a series of horrors and tragedies, but as a set of infinite opportunities.

"A podium and a prison are each a place," he said, "one high and one low, but in any place, your freedom of choice can be maintained if you wish." “Every event has two handles, one through which it can betransported and another for which he cannot.” Epictetus chose to focus on what was within his control: his opinions, his values, his desires, his sense of self, and ignore the rest.

Looking around at the powerful men and women of Nero's Court where he worked, Epictetus began to realize that although he was a slave, he was freer than many of them. They were enslaved to power and ambition, to pleasure and attention. Their minds wandered, they were easily distracted, they were hurt by minor offenses, and consumed by petty grudges. They lived bad lives. Thus, he educated himself with the great Stoic teacher Musônio Rufus and ended up gaining his freedom. He himself became the teacher of Rome's brightest students, including the future Emperor Hadrian. His ideas reached Marcus Aurelius, and suddenly a man who had so little power was influencing the most powerful people in the world for the better.

What we learn from Epictetus is not just pure endurance and resilience, but the ability to find and build a good life anywhere, at all times. Circumstances do not make a man, said Epictetus, they only reveal him to himself. The Stoics said that we are actors in a play. All an actor can do is play his role well and learn to leave the rest aside. This is how we should see life. We don't control where we are born, or who our parents are, or how other people treat us. We only control what we do with the material we receive. Yes, much of this is out of our control, but we have a lot more agency than some people think. Can we, through determination and skill, learn how to shape our own destiny, control it? No, molding it, yes, performing splendidly in our current role, whatever it may be.

It was the first century AD and Lucius Annaeus Seneca was struggling to work. The problem was the deafening, shocking noise coming from the street below. Athletes worked out in the gym below their suite of rooms, dropping heavy weights. A masseur hummed the backs of fat old men at the entrance of the building. A pickpocket was being arrested and making a scene. Passing carriages roared through the stone streets while carpenters hammered in their shops and vendors shouted their wares. The children laughed and played, the dogs barked, and more than the noise outside his window, there was the simple fact that Seneca's life was going from bad to worse due to a political incident that had caused his expulsion from Pomegranate. This threatened his finances; he was getting older and he could feel it. He had been removed from politics by his enemies and now, at odds with Nero, could easily, at the emperor's whim, lose his head. It was not an ideal environment for a human to accomplish anything. The noise and distractions of the empire were enough to make him hate his own hearing, Seneca told a friend. Yet for good reason, this scene has tantalized admirers for centuries. How did a man beset by adversity and hardship not only not go mad, but actually find the serenity to think clearly and write perfectly crafted essays that would reach centuries after his death.

Millions and millions approach truths that few have accessed. “I hardened my nerves against all that sort of thing,” Seneca explained to the same friend about the noise. "I force my mind to focus and keep it from straying to things outside of it. Everything outdoors can be a mess, but as long as there is no inner disturbance, we can maintain serenity and focus on the important things. That's not it. What do we all want? To be able to tune out your surroundings, to access your full capabilities anytime and anywhere, despite all the difficulties? How wonderful that would be. If a person could develop peace within If so, then the whole world could be at war, and she could still think well, work well and be well."

“You can be sure that you are at peace with yourself,” wrote Seneca, “when no noise reaches you, when no words take you out of yourself, be it a flattery or a threat or just an empty sound buzzing around you with meaningless sounds. sin. In this state, nothing could touch them, not even a distraught emperor. No emotion could disturb them, no threat could interrupt them, and every beat of the present moment would be theirs to live. They would have reached that magical place, that magical word of stillness.”

Another great stoic man, buried his children; he saw plagues, floods and war. He was betrayed by those closest to him. He was surrounded by the corrupt, the inept, and the infinitely ambitious. Although critics are wrong to call Marcus Aurelius depressing or negative, he was unquestionably in pain, tired, and frustrated. This was a man who, understandably, found himself, like the rest of us, tired of life, and the burden of managing the vast Roman empire. However, despite the role that suicide played in the history of Stoicism, politics in Rome, and the more accepted place it had in Roman history, Marcus did not choose this path. He didn't blame anyone; he did not resent the hand he was dealt or the painful cards he had to play. He moved on. He found rest in physical activity and work. He tried, as we talked about recently, to focus on the beauty amidst the ugliness of life. He had the courage to ask for help, as we have already discussed. He was able to accept his heavy world of obligations to Rome as something fate had laid out for him, his duty as Emperor.

Marcus Aurelius not only got out of bed every morning, but also made an effort to do so early. In the pages of his meditations, he remembered why he was here on this planet, what his nature required of him, and what his duty was. He kept going and found relief, purpose, and even joy in it. No matter who you are or what you are going through, the same thing is available to you within your soul. Marcus Aurelius would like to remind you that there is peace to which you can retreat whenever you wish. It's okay that you're tired. It's understandable and perfectly acceptable. Just use the resources available to you. Above all, stick around.

Marco Aurélio must have asked himself what he did to deserve all this. First, he lost his father at the age of three. Then he was pulled away from his first love, philosophy, and thrust into politics. When he finally became emperor, decades of peace exploded into 19 years of border wars and civil strife. There was a plague, there were floods, and he had crippling health problems. At some point, as he buried another of his children, as he wept over the incessant toll of disease and pestilence, he must have thought, "Haven't I given enough? When will this end? What new horrors await?" And yet, somehow, he never managed to give in to despair. He continued, pushing aside resentment, bitterness, fear, or helplessness.

There are dark moments in his meditations, to be sure, but mostly what you see in these pages are little sentences about how life still has meaning, about how he can find the good in the world, how he must continue to do his duty.

Only 10% of the book is dedicated to things he is grateful for. So don't let anyone tell you that Stoicism is a harsh, pessimistic philosophy. Don't let anyone tell you that this is a philosophy of resignation. On the contrary, it is a deeply optimistic and resilient belief system. It's not about giving up; It's about not giving up, not giving in, not letting fate or misfortune break you, loving life despite everything. Marcus never gave up; he never took any of this personally; He never stopped being good, and neither did you.

Marcus Aurelius was a true philosopher Emperor, but he was neither the first nor the last among the Stoics.

Octavian studied with Athenodorus, Hadrian took lessons from Epictetus, and Antoninus was something of a natural administrator. But in fact all the Stoics were of the same mould. Cleanthes was a manual laborer, but he behaved as if his work mattered, as he did. A man in command of himself did not desire the power Caesar so destructively sought. Epictetus was a slave, but he knew he was freer than most of the men in Nero's court. As Epictetus' teacher, Musonius Rufus, would say: “I believe that a good king is, from the beginning and by necessity, a philosopher, and the philosopher is, from the beginning, a person capable of reigning”.

For the Stoics, it didn't matter what you did for a living; It mattered how they did it. Yes, of course, there was the position of emperor, but much more important was being a person of the empire, conquering the greatest empire – the one that Seneca established: the command of himself. "If we want to aspire to power, this is the kind we aspire to. If we want to lead, let us begin by leading ourselves. If we want praise and privileges, let us seek to earn them rather than covet and acquire them."

And by the way, some of the names in today's message—Athenodorus, Cleanthes, and M. Rufus—may not be as familiar to you as Marcus, Seneca, and Epictetus (the so-called "big three"), but they're actually equally fascinating and in some cases better examples of what Stoicism should be.

(Stoic Lessons)