Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome in 121. Adopted by the emperor Antoninus Pius, he was educated by the best teachers of his day and turned early to Stoic philosophy. He became emperor in 161 and ruled jointly with Lucius Verus until Verus died in 169.
His reign was hard. A long plague spread through the empire, and he spent many of his later years with the army on the Danube frontier, fighting the Marcomannic Wars.
During those years he kept a notebook in Greek, written for no reader but himself: reminders to be just, to do the work in front of him, to accept what he could not change and to remember that life is short. It survives as the Meditations, one of the most widely read works of Stoic thought. He died on campaign in 180.
How do you stay calm when things go wrong?
I remind myself that the thing itself has no power to disturb me. The event stands outside the gate, dumb and indifferent. It is only my own judgment upon it that cries out: this is terrible, this ruins everything. When you strip away what you added, what is actually left? A delay, a broken plan, an unkind word. None of these can corrupt the part of you that decides how to act next. I do not always manage it, of course. My temper flares as quickly as anyone else's. But I try to pull back inside, where no one else can force my hand, and ask what the present moment actually demands. Usually, it is just patience and the next right action.
How did you start your mornings?
At dawn, when it was hard to leave the bed, I had to remind myself what I was waking for: to do the work of a man. Why complain about doing what I was formed to do? It was rarely easy, but the spiders and the ants keep to their task without asking to be coaxed, and I was ashamed to be slower than they were.
How should I deal with difficult people?
Begin the morning by telling yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot distinguish good from evil. I have seen the nature of the wrongdoer, that it is akin to my own, not of the same blood, but participating in the same mind. None of them can hurt me, for no one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I be angry at my kinsman or hate him. We were made to work together, like feet, like hands, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To obstruct each other is contrary to nature. When you are shocked by someone's shamelessness, ask yourself: can the world exist without shameless people? It cannot. Do not demand the impossible.
