Keep your philosophy ready

The following are some of my favorite passages from Book 3 of Meditations along with my brief reactions, initially written in my copy’s margins.

So, we need to hurry. Not just because we move daily closer to death, but also because our understanding, our grasp of the world, may be gone before we get there.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, 3.1 · Gregory Hays translation

We experience at least two deaths: the death of the body and the death of the mind. To me, the worst of the two is the death of the mind, and it arrives first for most of us. Keep the mind healthy — philosophy helps — and use it while you have it.

You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, 3.4 · Gregory Hays translation

What am I thinking about? I must strengthen my mental discipline so I have an answer and am happy with it. Discipline and honesty. Be proud of my thoughts because I’ve trained them to be useful.

Choose what’s best.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, 3.6 · Gregory Hays translation

Simple. Simple can be more powerful and thought-provoking than an essay. It is true here: what it excludes is what makes it resonate. Don’t choose what is convenient, expected, desired, or any other motivation we offer for not simply choosing what is best. Best for whom? That is the right follow-up question and Book 2 makes the answer clear, at least from Marcus Aurelius’s point of view: aligning oneself with the logos, choosing what is best not for ourselves but for the rational, animating force of nature that governs all things.

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, 3.7 · Gregory Hays translation

Don’t justify my bad behavior. Own it.

Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, 3.11 · Gregory Hays translation

I feel like I over-analyze things, but perhaps it’s not a fault. Where does clarity end and endless rumination begin? At the razor’s edge of sanity.

Keep your philosophy ready.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, 3.13 · Gregory Hays translation

Build my tool chest. Keep it simple so I can use it every day.

Sprint for the finish.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, 3.14 · Gregory Hays translation

I’m not behind, don’t slow down, don’t give up.