Good morning, SuperForest!
It’s not every day you turn to a Roman emperor for words of advice, but as of late this is exactly what I’ve been doing. Marcus Aurelius was not only considered the last of Rome’s “Five Good Emperors”, but he is also considered one of the world’s most influential Stoic philosophers. Though the word “stoicism” is attributed to the “endurance of pain” or “hardship without complaint”, the philosophic movement had more to do with “living with an awareness of impermanence” than it did with being macho and eerily reminds me of some of the most basic buddhist teachings. A long (long) time ago, Aurelius said something that really rings true to some discoveries I’ve made on my own, as of late, through a good amount of introspection, and thought it might be of some interest to you SuperForesters, too.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Beautiful! Because when you think of it, it’s never the things that happen to us that cause us pain or suffering, it’s how we respond. We create the distress and only cause that initial pain to amplify by not only witnessing or experiencing events, but creating stories about them. And due to the workings of the human brain, those stories that we make up are usually the furthest thing from the truth. Which leads us to the real beauty of Aurelius’ quote, which is in the latter part. For once we start to realize that we are making up stories time and time again that are causing us distress, it becomes easier to notice it with compassion and move on. Furthermore, it becomes easier for us to stop guessing and interpreting what these life events mean, and to simply live them.
Kudos to Aurelius for saying it a billion times better than I ever could (and hundreds and hundreds of years earlier, too.)
With love,
C
(quote via)
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