Marcus Aurelius pointed out that regardless
of the severity of circumstances, there’s always a choice in how we judge them. “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t
feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been,”
he stated. Marcus’ instruction sounds easy, but it’s
difficult to apply if we don’t understand what causes us to feel harmed and when we
don’t have the wisdom to make a change. Luckily, the ancient Stoics provide this wisdom. In general, the amount of suffering that humans
endure depends, for the most part, on the whims of fate. But it varies per person to what degree fate
affects them. The Stoics argued again and again that someone
with a robust inner faculty would suffer less than someone whose emotional well-being is
entirely dependent on outside circumstances. Some circumstances can be harmful to one person
but don’t affect another. Also, many people tend to experience certain
past events as hurtful for many years, while

others shake off their negative experiences,
and don’t let the past ruin the present and future. And at least as typical are those who feel
continually harmed by things that haven’t even happened yet, which may sound ridiculous,
but it’s precisely what chronic worries do. It’s not the outside world and the events
that take place in it—our bodies included—that hurt us, but our thoughts, memories, and fantasies
regarding them. Thus, the key to resilience lies within the
inner faculty, which is the only place of the human experience that we have complete
control over. The philosophy of Stoicism concerns itself
with strengthening the mind rather than strengthening anything outside of it, which is secondary
and should have as little influence on our well-being as humanly possible. But what tools does Stoicism provide for this? The work Meditations by Marcus Aurelius contains
several ideas that shed another light on the experiences we usually consider harmful. His writings allow us to see our lives differently
and change the way we think about the hardships.

we face, so we can be, as he wrote it, “like
the rock that the waves keep crashing over.” This video expands upon several passages from
the Meditations that could help us feel less harmed. By the way, you’ll find more Stoic wisdom
in this new book - Stoicism for Inner Peace - which contains my collected works on remaining
calm and focused in these challenging times. For more information, you’ll find a link
in the description. Marcus Aurelius called the mind the ruler
of the soul. This assertion seems to be in line with Buddhist
thought, as the historical Buddha stated that “nothing precedes the mind.” So, ultimately, how we think decides how we
feel. For example, if we experience physical pain,
we can make it worse by fighting and resisting it. We can also generate fear on top of the pain,
dwelling on the idea that our pain will never end or even worsens in the future.

Eventually, our thinking may cause more suffering than the bodily pain itself. Marcus Aurelius argued that our minds should be “unstirred by agitations of the flesh - gentle and violent ones alike.” What he precisely meant by agitations of the flesh remains unclear. But it seems that this passage is about physical pain and the role of the mind in experiencing it. The idea of injuries to the body, for example, is terrifying for most people, and we generally go to great lengths to avoid such physical pain. Unfortunately, life gives us no guarantees that we will never incur it. It’s plausible that we experience painful illnesses, accidents and become victims of violence at some point in our lives. For the most significant part, this is not in our control. But according to Marcus Aurelius, “nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure.” Even though pain is an inevitable part of human life, we have a choice whether or not

we experience additional pain on top of what
the outside world imposes on us. The amount of extra pain we experience depends
on our judgments. I quote: When they make their way into your thoughts,
through the sympathetic link between mind and body, don’t try to resist the sensation. The sensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in with judgments,
calling it “good” or “bad.” End quote. Marcus Aurelius makes a distinction here between
sensations and actual suffering. The first is natural; the mind creates the
latter. He tells himself not to resist the pain itself
and refrain from judging it. We could say that the sensation of pain itself
isn’t necessarily suffering if we don’t consider it as something terrible but accept
it as a natural phenomenon that is neither good nor bad. “Pain is inevitable suffering is optional,”
so goes the saying. Or, we could say that pain in itself is bad
enough; why make it worse by resisting it.

through judgment? I quote: Let the part of you that makes that judgment
keep quiet, even if the body it’s attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinking with pus,
or consumed by cancer. Or to put it another way: It needs to realize
that what happens to everyone—bad and good alike—is neither good nor bad. That what happens in every life—lived naturally
or not—is neither natural nor unnatural. End quote. Even though Marcus Aurelius wrote about the
agitations of the flesh, we can apply his reasoning to other forms of pain as well. Whenever we feel hurt — for example, by
an insult — it’s not the insult itself that hurts us, but the way we judge it. Our beliefs cause our judgments. When we believe that no one has the right
to insult us, then we’ll experience agitation when it happens nonetheless. But if we think that receiving insults is
part of associating with humans and that we can’t control what other people do or say,
we’re less likely to feel harmed by them.

Marcus Aurelius stated that we don’t find
harm within anyone else’s mind, not in the shifts and changes of the world. We find it in our “capacity to see it.” Some people live in continual conflict with
the world around them. They seem to be affected by virtually everything
they encounter: the news, the neighbors’ affairs, and what’s happening at work. Such people can’t stop complaining about
what’s wrong with the world and, in extreme cases, they have convinced themselves that
they’re better off dead than living in such a miserable place called Earth. If we live in continual conflict with the
world, our beliefs are probably not in line with reality. In many cases, they oppose them. So, if we want to end this ongoing conflict
with our environment, we have to change our beliefs. An excellent way to start is to stop asking
so much of the world. In fact, in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius argues
against asking the impossible, calling it

a crazy thing to do. We cannot expect what cannot be delivered. And one thing that’s certain about asking
the impossible is that it’s a strategy doomed to fail. Yet, often in subtle ways, we seem to ask
the impossible all the time, as we wish for things to happen in ways that are unrealistic
and not aligned with the nature of the world. So-called ‘empty optimists’ are prone
to this. Their optimism makes them hopeful and confident
about a future when there’s hardly any ground for it. Confidence and hope aren’t bad things in
themselves. But if they’re not in line with reality,
then disappointment is the logical consequence. Expecting good fortune alone is asking the
impossible. Wishing never to become sick, never be insulted,
never be ridiculed is asking the impossible. We have as much control over these things
as a rock controls the waves crashing on it. For the mind that expects too much, life is
continually at fault, as reality never satisfies.

Marcus Aurelius repeatedly points to providence. From a Stoic point of view, providence means that nothing happens what nature has not intended. So, everything we perceive as defects is intentional and, therefore, exactly how it should be. Dishonest, arrogant, ungrateful, jealous, and shameless people are part of this world, just like vice, virtue, happiness, sadness, good, and evil. Wishing otherwise would be a wish against nature itself. I quote: When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. End quote. As long as there’s life, there will be illness and death. As long as there are people, there will be those with defects.

Not asking the impossible means stop trying to change the universe. We can’t do it, no matter how much we try. The universe always wins. If we accept this, we’ll see the value in lowering our expectations. And if we stop wanting things to happen as we wish, but wish for them to happen as they do happen, is there anything left that can harm us? There’s beauty in decay and imperfection. We only have to look at the cracks in an old wall or the crookedness of trees, and we’ll notice that these things intrigue us. Marcus Aurelius wrote about loaves of bread split open on top in the oven, and how the ridges, a by-product of baking, are pleasing and rouse the appetite. He pointed out that nature’s recklessness has its own charm. An aging face, a wrinkled apple, the ruins of a city we often consider beautiful, even though they have been subject to decay.

I quote: And so, if a man has a feeling for, and a deeper insight into the processes of the Universe, there is hardly one but will somehow appear to present itself pleasantly to him, even among mere attendant circumstances. Such a man also will feel no less pleasure in looking at the actual jaws of wild beasts than at the imitations which painters and sculptors exhibit, and he will be enabled to see in an old woman or an old man a kind of freshness and bloom (...). End quote. So, why don’t we treat life’s adversities the same way? Life, overall, has a rough side to it. Many things happen that don’t resemble our expectations. For example, a fiery romance between two people may arouse fantasies of a beautiful future together but may end up in a vale of tears instead. Or a promising career, backed up by significant experience in the field and various degrees, may come to an end because of illness.

And even when our lives are without hardship,
and everything plays out as we had hoped for, we’ll eventually end up sick and dead. So, we could spend our lives resisting the
ugly and be miserable when we experience it, but it’s still part of the game. Oftentimes, it’s adversity (not prosperity)
that rouses creative people like writers, filmmakers, painters, musicians, and poets,
to bring about creations that attract attention. Instead of detesting adversity, we could develop
an appreciation for it, like we accept the ridges as part of the bread, as much as the
bread itself. The ugly always accompanies the beautiful. And if we only want the latter and detest
the former, we deny Nature as a whole. But if we learn to welcome misfortune as much
as a stroke of luck, we’re less shaken when life gives us lemons. Moreover, we can almost always find some good
in the worst of circumstances.

Misfortune can inspire us, remind us of our fragility, change our perspective on life, and lead us to become more compassionate to others. If we see beauty in whatever overcomes us, fate will hardly ever harm us. When our judgments work against us, we suffer. As outside circumstances are beyond our control, we add value to things that we don’t have power over by judging them. As a consequence, something that’s not up to us can decide how we feel. So, when something that we consider unfavorable enters our lives, we feel bad. And when something that we find desirable leaves us, we feel bad as well. The stronger our judgments are, the more vulnerable we become to the whims of Fortuna: the unpredictable Goddess of luck, chance, and fate. But Fortuna cannot harm us unless we let her. Not letting Fortuna damage us doesn’t mean that we can, somehow, control fate. Fate will do whatever it wants, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

But we do control how we position ourselves towards it. We can resist it, or we can embrace it. We can accept what Fortuna provides us with, no matter how unfortunate, or we can be angry and bitter about it, or we can see the beauty in it. When it comes to being harmed, there isn’t much we can do about the actions of those around us. But it’s entirely in our power to focus on ourselves and practice becoming more resilient to the world instead of being in conflict with it or trying to control it. According to Marcus Aurelius, it’s not our problem when, for example, people hate or despise us, “it’s their problem.” Our task is to stay equanimous when facing these people and not being swept away by their malice. And so we can look at any misfortune that’s thrown our way. From a Stoic perspective, adversity in itself isn’t harmful to our sense of well-being.

It’s only harmful if we let it be. Hence, “Choose not to be harmed—and you
won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” Thank you for watching.

Don’t Feel Harmed, And You Haven’t Been | The Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

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