Marcus Aurelius asked himself a direct question in Meditation V.33.
Why dost thou not rather act up to thy master’s will until death comes, instead of complaining? How long wilt thou serve? Dost thou not depart when thy time is up?
He’s talking to himself the way a soldier might talk to himself before a long march. Why are you complaining? Serve until it’s over. When your time is up, go.
The interesting word is “master.” We all have masters, even Marcus as Emperor had masters: his people, his army, himself.
And then he asks the harder question: until that time comes — what is sufficient? What do you actually need to do with the time you have?
He answers himself in four things.
The Four Things
Is it not enough that thou dost venerate and praise the gods; that thou dost good to men; that thou dost bear and abstain? And as to everything else, if thou rememberest that thou art not the proprietor of thy flesh and breath, and dost not belong to thyself; everything else is not in thy power.
Four things. Until your time comes.
Venerate what is above you. Do good to the people around you. Practice tolerance — bearing what comes. Practice self-restraint — abstaining from what isn’t yours. And as for everything beyond the limits of your flesh and breath — remember: it is not yours, and it is not in your power.
That’s the whole philosophy. Not twelve steps. Not a system. Four things and a reminder.
What Venerate Means
Marcus uses the word venerate rather than worship or obey. The distinction is worth noting. Venerate means to regard with deep respect — to honor something for what it is rather than out of obligation or fear.
He’s not telling himself to be obedient to the gods out of duty. He’s telling himself to look at what is larger than himself and hold it with genuine respect. The universe. Nature. The rational order of things. Whatever you call what is above you — hold it with reverence rather than contempt or indifference.
That’s the first thing. The orientation.
What Doing Good Means
The second thing is practical and immediate. Do good to the men and women around you. Not to humanity in the abstract. To the actual people in front of you, today, in the circumstances you’re actually in.
Marcus writes this on a military campaign. The men around him are soldiers. He is their commander. Doing good to them means leading them well, making sound decisions, treating them with the respect that cooperation requires. It doesn’t mean liking them all or agreeing with them. It means doing his actual job with genuine care for their wellbeing.
That’s the second thing. The action.
Bear and Abstain
The third and fourth things are about restraint — the discipline of what you accept and what you refuse.
Bear: tolerate what comes. Don’t grumble at what happens, as he writes elsewhere. Don’t add the suffering of resistance to the suffering of the event itself. Bear it.
Abstain: don’t take what isn’t yours. Don’t grab at pleasure, status, credit, revenge, or anything else that belongs to the territory of what you’re not the proprietor of.
And then the reminder that makes both of these possible: you are not the proprietor of your flesh and breath. Your body, your life, your time — these were given to you on loan. The proprietor will call them back. In the meantime, you are a steward, not an owner.
Everything else is not in your power. Which means the only sensible response to everything else is to let it go.
Why Jimmy Keeps Coming Back to This
Of everything in the Meditations — and there is a great deal in the Meditations — this passage is the one Jimmy returns to most often. Not because it’s the most profound. Because it’s the most complete.
It doesn’t solve every problem. It doesn’t answer every question. But it gives you exactly enough to work with. Four things to do. One thing to remember. Until your time comes.
Marcus wrote this to himself on a battlefield, knowing he might not see the morning. He was not being poetic. He was being practical. He was identifying the minimum necessary — the things without which a life cannot be called well-lived, and with which it can.
Venerate. Do good. Bear. Abstain. And remember what is not yours.
That’s all. That’s enough.
This concludes Jimmy’s sixteen-part analysis of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The readings, the QuickTake, and all sixteen blog posts are available at readingwithjimmy.com. Questions and reactions to [email protected].