Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Meditations, Book X, Section XI

Marcus Aurelius in Book X, Section XI:
To find out, and set to thyself some certain way and method of contemplation, whereby thou mayest clearly discern and represent unto thyself, the mutual change of all things, the one into the other. Bear it in thy mind evermore, and see that thou be throughly well exercised in this particular. For there is not anything more effectual to beget true magnanimity.
Rendered into simpler & more contemporary English:
To discover a way of noticing how all things change and transform into different things and keeping this in mind forever after. There is nothing else as effective for making you generous and kind.
*          *          *          *          *          *

One can see all around that a major source of harshness, cruelty, conflict and misery is inability to accommodate oneself to inevitable change and transformation--in the world, in one's own life--clinging to circumstances which, like everything else that has ever been, won't stand still. 

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