Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Marcus Aurelius: O my soul, the time I trust will be,…
O my soul, the time I trust will be, when thou shalt be good, simple, single, more open and visible, than that body by which it is enclosed. Thou wilt one day be sensible of their happiness, whose end is love, and their affections dead to all worldly things.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Meditations. The reading beside it is ours.
Most of us spend enormous effort managing an image: sounding smart, looking successful, seeming unbothered. It is exhausting work, and it puts distance between us and everyone else. The better ambition is to become so clear in your character that there is less and less to hide. Not perfect—just honest, simple, and directed by goodwill rather than performance. That kind of person does not need a carefully edited profile or a clever explanation for every choice. Their values are visible in how they answer an email, treat a waiter, and speak about someone who is absent. Marcus is imagining a self that is no longer tangled in appetite, vanity, or pretense. You move toward it by removing one unnecessary layer at a time. Today, ask: where am I performing when I could simply be sincere?
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