Jimmy is red-green colorblind.
When you tell him something is red, he can’t see what you’re seeing. He has to take your word for it. His eye processes the wavelength differently. What you call red, he calls something else, or nothing at all. “My red.” You have “your red.”
Here’s the thing: both of you are right.
You see red. He doesn’t. Both of those are true at the same time. Neither one is lying. Neither of you is broken. Both of you are each accurately reporting what your sensory equipment is receiving.
Marcus Aurelius understood this. He wrote that idea as the foundation of one of the most radical ideas in the Meditations about the universe.
The Universe Is Transformation
The universe is transformation: life is opinion.
That’s Meditation IV.3, in George Long’s translation. Four words for what the universe does. Three words for what life is. One word that sums it up: Opinion.
Not facts. Not truth in the absolute sense. Opinion — the way things appear to you, from where you are, with what you know, through the equipment you have.
Jimmy has been circling this idea through every serious work of classical literature he’s read on this channel, and Marcus states it more directly than anyone.
The Sun Problem
Does the sun go around the earth, or does the earth go around the sun?
The ancient man who stood in his field and watched the sun move across the sky from east to west, all day, every day, concluded: the sun moves. It moves around us. We are at the center.
He was right. From his position. With his knowledge. With the observational tools available to him. His conclusion was the correct output of the inputs he had. You can look at the sun moving today and conclude the same thing.
But he was also incorrect. We know now that the earth orbits the sun from science. The apparent motion of the sun across the sky is the earth rotating. He was right and wrong in the same breath.
But here’s the question Marcus would ask: at what point does that ancient man become responsible for his wrong opinion? When the information becomes available to him and he refuses it? When he could have known better but chose not to?
And the follow-on question: how many opinions are you carrying right now that are exactly that ancient man’s? Correct outputs from incomplete inputs?
Cast Away Opinion
Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed.’ Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.
Meditation IV.7. Marcus’s most direct statement of this principle.
The harm is not in the event or even the event itself. The harm is in your opinion of the event. Remove opinion — or at least examine it, test it, ask whether it’s actually true — and the harm loses its power.
This is not the same as saying nothing bad ever happens. Things happen. People suffer. Marcus’s own life was full of loss — children died, his empire was threatened, his own health declined. He isn’t dismissing any of that.
He’s saying that a significant portion of suffering is not in an event itself but in the way you react to the event. Which means you can examine that reaction. Which means you can change the reaction regardless of the event.
The Hardest Part
The hardest part of this idea isn’t understanding it. It’s applying it to an opinion you’ve already decided is a truth.
When you’ve carried something long enough, it stops feeling like an opinion. It feels like a fact. Someone wronged you. That’s not an opinion — that happened. The relationship failed because of them. That’s not an opinion — anyone could see it. You’re not good at this particular thing. That’s not an opinion — you’ve proven it over and over.
Marcus says: look again. All of those are opinions. Some of them might be accurate. Some of them might be the ancient man watching the sun.
He had to write this concept to himself. Repeatedly. Reminders. The Meditations return to it again and again from different angles. He was never really done with it. Neither should we be.
Read the Meditations with Jimmy at readingwithjimmy.com. Questions and reactions to [email protected].