Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Marcus Aurelius: If once round and solid, there is no…
If once round and solid, there is no fear that ever it will change.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Meditations. The reading beside it is ours.
A mind with a stable center is harder for circumstances to distort. Marcus’s image is of something round and solid: complete in itself, not easily warped by a blow from outside. We often give the day too much access to our shape. A compliment inflates us. A rude email collapses us. A small win makes us generous; a delay makes us impossible to be around. Stability does not mean numbness. It means having values that are not renegotiated every time the weather changes. You can be pleased by success and disappointed by failure without becoming a different person in each case. Build that firmness through small repetitions: keep promises, tell the truth, pause before reacting, do the task you said you would do. Today, let one irritating event hit your surface without reaching your center.
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