Choose Not To Be Harmed

I read Meditations for probably the 5th time recently and I learn something new every time I read it no matter what. I read it recently and it still continues to amaze me how someone like Marcus Aurelius was wise beyond his years over thousands of years ago. His ability to express himself and also be the best version of himself while making sure his empire was taken care of was amazing. The amazing thing about meditations is that it wasn't meant to be published to the world. Marcus wrote these words for himself and never meant for anyone else to have access to it. That is the beauty of it to me because everything in the book applies to life today and will apply to life in hundreds and thousands of years.

There are a lot of things I can talk about in the book but Marcus always illustrates the power of our mind and our ability to not be affected by the actions or thoughts of others. We can always choose to take something a certain way and let it affect us and that is something I want to continue to improve on. Marcus Aurelius emphasizes the importance of indifference. Indifference does not mean not caring but instead not worrying about things that make no difference or the things we have no control over. People's thoughts about us and their actions are not in our control and we shouldn't worry about it.

We human beings always have the power to not be affected by the things that has no impact on us. A lot of the times we stress about things we can't change or people but it is best to just let them be and focus on doing us. This doesn't necessarily mean not caring about others but we have to differentiate between what needs our attention and what doesn't. A lot of the times we focus a lot on things we have no control over and that does more harm than good. Even if we know people are trying their hardest to get a reaction out of us, we always have the choice to not let it get to us.

Marcus Aurelius tells us we have power over our mind and not everything that happens outside of us. These things that may happen have nothing to do with us and we just have to let it be. Our mind is the most powerful tool we have and we have every right to protect it and guide it. Marcus Aurelius illustrates this throughout the book and we have to be aware of the power of our thoughts. What we think about can make or break us.