Book Study: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

It was a feeling of going back in time to ancient times to see what wisdom I could get from it. Not much, and you know me, a single line of quote is all it takes. This time, the quote says:

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

The statement, or better still, the quote already embodies all it has to say in a couple of words. It is about keeping it simple; you have the power over your mind and not outside events. If you can understand this, you find strength. What Marcus Aurelius is saying is something I have always believed in strongly, which is that you cannot control what happens outside your power, but rather how you respond to it. It is more like spending your time dealing with people's responses instead of focusing more on your reaction.

There are a lot of things that happen in this world daily, and as humans, we get to deal with a lot of them more often than we want. Simply because these things are beyond one's control. But through an understanding of the quote, we get to know that we need to spend more time on how we respond to it.

Many people have fallen into the cycle of letting external factors that are not within their control dictate their emotions. You have a bad day, things do not go as planned, or as you hoped. Things like this and more are what Marcus Aurelius calls outside events. Then he flips things by making one understand that the only thing within your control is your mind; others are just events beyond your control and temporary. There is not much noise in what you do not have, but strength in what you can control.

Taking into account that it is not about what you might encounter but how you respond, you will come to realize that so much can be done when things are only temporary. You find it easy when you do not have to deal so much with what others think, which is not within your control. Eventually, you get to find the true strength that lies in being the one in control of your emotions, not having to worry about what makes you react or not. The author shares an insight that having control of your emotions is a true strength, where one would no longer be controlled by outside events that are temporary.

The author also spoke about the idea that being happy is reliant on external factors, if I have this or that, I will be happy, or if things go my way, I will be truly happy. But this hands over the control of your happiness to an external factor that is not in your control. It is like placing what will make you happy in an event that you have zero idea of how it will turn out. Anything can happen in situations like that why one should pay attention to themselves. Make your mind happy first before you rely on external forces.

I believe that the idea that what makes it possible to be truly happy is understanding how emotions play a major factor in this, and controlling them can be pretty helpful and peaceful as well.

_{I am @samostically, a chess player and writer. I love to share the experience I have gained from different battles over the 64 squares and the knowledgeable insights from books I have read. But most importantly, I am a Midnight Owl and I founded the community Midnight Letters.}