Questions from Marcus Aurelius

Posted on May 09, 2017 by Andrei Rosca, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

“Greatness comes not from intellectual capacity, wealth or station. It comes from consciousness of one’s honest purpose, from frequent self-examination, not influenced by the opinions of others and oriented around a sense of social good.”

Rather than an exact quote, this is what I understood from how Marcus Aurelius perceived “greatness.” It might sound simple and exhaustive, but if you dissect it and look a bit around (and why not, within) you, you’ll soon realize that to achieve that, people need to:

1. Find their own goal instead of using recipes from the outside. For example: GetHighGrades-GraduateHigh-School-GetIntoCollege-SafeJobInACorporation-GetMarried-BuyAHouse-MakeABaby-BuyACar-MakeAnotherBaby-WeReDone.

2. Learn to analyze themselves objectively and spend time by themselves. That implies not surrounding themselves with people so that they no longer think of their problems, not watching TV in order to become comfortably numb before going to bed, not holding a smartphone in their hands constantly because otherwise they feel disconnected, not staying on Facebook while hoping to feel less lonely than they already are.

3. Stop comparing their own life, which – being theirs – they know in great detail, with the image that others project about their lives on Facebook, for example. Or during the vacations they go on together. Or while having a drink with other people once every 3 months or 4 years, which should completely replace the period when a TV show turned out to be more important. In all this time, each of them has imagined things about the others by doing projections that start from a Facebook update – the only moment of happiness from a 4-day long summer vacation, or a photo from an airport where they’ve just half an hour, before embarking on another plane.

4. Understand the concept of “social good.” Basically, they need to understand what these two words mean when they’re place one next to the other. That’s pretty difficult, since most people don’t even understand the individual meanings of these two words. What does “social” mean besides Facebook and people with low or no income? What does good mean to us, besides a social value? Who decides what’s good? The masses? The individuals? Someone or something from up above?

There are at least 4 things that each and every one of us should try to change. Maybe it’s a lifetime’s work, but beyond a certain point, people get to see results. Not only in “greatness,” but also in life and how happy each of us is.

Anyway, like most nice people and books, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius didn’t give me any answer. Just a few more tons of questions and a conviction: that only a life that’s examined and analyzed is worth living. Other than that, we don’t all have to live our lives.

For some of us, life simply passes by.