“Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your own best self: for that does fall within your own control.” -Epictetus
Worth remembering about the staple Stoic text that is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is that it was not a book written for public consumption. It was a personal wartime journal Aurelius kept as a means of remaining grounded during the tumultuous periods he endured as Roman emperor. The broad-reaching utility of its insights aside, the book itself presents a useful meta commentary on the value of knowing who one wants to be. Emperor for 19 years, there was no shortage of temptations to be who others wanted him to be. This journal of epithets to himself reminded him of what mattered, of who he wanted to be, and how he wanted to operate both as a leader and a human. What became known as Meditations was truly his own set of meditative principles that would inform all things. It was his own philosophy of self.
Demonstrated by Marcus Aurelius' efforts in capturing lessons to himself is an awareness of the following: If you do not decide who you are, it will be decided for you.
There's a few measures by which we can determine who or what the decider is in our lives, the simplest of which being whether you're authentically happy with yourself (not with matters outside of your control, but yourself) at the end each day. Such is most often the case when your daily work is that of fitting your own mold. Philosopher playwright Seneca presents us with a lofty reflection when he expresses that a human's "ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born." While our specific sense of purpose can evolve, an enriched life is living each day in a manner suited to one's intent—most optimally, one's own intent.
Existence balances the self being both separate from and related to others. Some of our best qualities are refined and displayed because of the opportunities given to us by others. This differs, however, from being wholly guided by others’ inputs. Unlike children for whom inputs are largely chosen and carefully curated, the shift to adulthood is marked by choosing the inputs that amplify more of the person we wish to be—the person we were likely already becoming, but rightly-identified accelerants streamline the journey. From the books we read and the insights we find, to the well-placed individuals a few stages ahead of us in a position to open doors, life soon becomes the continuous act of both selecting influences and selecting our response to them. What we're tasked with in the midst of this is knowing the difference between that which is unlocking more of who we aim to be, and that which, despite its cunning allure, lacks the substance we seek.
You must have an acute understanding of what your own edification looks like, and of what might be externally influenced but useful and character building. You have to understand what it is you're looking for and what you're willing to find (and how willing you are to be shaped by what's found). This is not a call for the rejection of all media or opinions, but a call for intent to be what leads us to what we consume, and an understanding of what we may be availing ourselves to as a result.
There is something to be said for the fact that Marcus Aurelius was 40 when he became emperor, writing his meditations over the following two decades. The age of 40 is arbitrary in specificity, but helpful in its representation of life lived as an adult. He'd lived life long enough to know what his own edification looked like ("long enough" measured and defined by awareness alone).
There are destructive paths to a desired destination; a well-defined destination makes the paths few. A well-defined destination captures not only where we wish to be but who we wish to be while there. Do you want a private island, or do you also want to feel good about how you earned the option to have one? Do you want children, or do you want to be a person with the freedom to be a present and nurturing parent, come what may? A well-defined destination is one in which its dreamer recognizes it as still yet a stop along the way, with demands of its own.
The question we must ask when we consider certain paths is this: Are we willing to live with whoever it is we thought we had to become?
"If the goal is glory, I call them ambitious; if it's money, I call them avaricious. If, however, their efforts aim at improving the mind, then—and only then—do I call them hard-working. Never praise or blame people on common grounds; look to their judgments exclusively. Because that is the determining factor..." -Epictetus
The one with a clear philosophy of self is the one best equipped to play their own game. Their joy is in the act of contribution within this game. Awareness of our overarching and specific, time-bound aims arms us against the temptation that is comparison, reminding us not only of the race we're running, but of what this stretch of that race requires. One's own game is such that the knowledge of winning can only be fully known by the self. In a podcast episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, CD Baby founder and writer Derek Sivers presented a compelling reframing for how we perceive the success of others:
"My third and real answer [to the question of who I see as successful], after thinking it through, is that we can’t know without knowing a person’s aims. What if Richard Branson set out to live a quiet life, but like a compulsive gambler, he just can’t stop creating companies? Then that changes everything, and we can’t call him successful anymore." (The Tim Ferriss Show episode transcript here.)
Anything addressing the nuanced topic of the “self” bears doing so with clarity. Now little more than an empowerment quip used to excuse any behavior, “not caring what other people think” has become the banner slogan for the contrarian. A philosophy of self is not synonymous with contrarianism, as contrarianism pursued for its own sake is vanity veiling a deeper void. More useful is the urging to not care about what others think so much that it hinders our expression of capability. Any grain gone against is for the purposes of showing that a better way is possible. Compelling individualism invites better from the whole, encouraging the collective toward what we might be capable of.
As expressed in this blog's origins, reflective philosophy is not indulgent navel gazing, but rather, active participation in how we decide to perceive life unfolding, and in who we decide to be while it does.
It serves us to answer a question encouraged by Aurelius for ourselves: "...how can [you] live the best life possible in the time that is granted..?” In its most feasible specificity, what does this look like? Is room left for the answer to evolve over time? Is there a willingness to adapt or discard what is no longer useful? The slave-turned-philosopher and teacher Epictetus describes our most fundamental human desire as "a life that flows smoothly." Pain, then, comes from any perceived hindrance to this—edification, from a thoughtfully-selected response.
Learning again from the meditative work of Marcus Aurelius, capturing our guiding tenets is a failsafe amidst the inevitable periods that lead the will to wane. Fatigue, excess, and overwhelm will cycle through our lives as naturally as the seasons change; as phrased in Meditations, we're to equip ourselves to return to ourselves with all speed, regaining the will only by remembering what matters and who we intend to be. The world as it is is too chaotic to consistently serve our best interests; we must do that. In this way, anything that happens is simply what happens. We, the self-contained entity, continue onward, unscathed.
"Remember that your governing faculty becomes invincible when it withdraws into itself and rests content with itself, doing nothing other than what it wishes...and how much more contented it will be, then, when it founds its decision on reason and careful reflection." -Marcus Aurelius