On the Dawn of a New Month & A New Quarter: A Closing Thought

 

​Meditations, you could say, is Marcus Aurelius exploring himself. That’s literally what the title means–the book isn’t for you and I, it’s “things to one’s self,” to himself. He’s exploring his fears, his desires, his flaws, his virtues.

That’s the journey that philosophy took Marcus on. Since he was a young man until right before his death, he was exploring himself, trying to understand himself and his nature better.

But what about you? How well do you know ‘the backroads of the self,’ as Marcus calls them in Book 4. You know every inch of the ride to work. You know this road or that city, you say, like the ‘back of your hand.’ But how well do you know yourself?

Too many of us are total strangers to ourselves. We seek busyness. We seek external markers. We seek out others to understand us, and demand that they hear what we’re saying. Meanwhile, we ignore the voice inside. The one that is whispering to us so many important lessons. The one that is shouting so many warnings.

​Meditation. Journaling. Long conversations–like the one between Seneca and Lucilius, or us and Seneca via his writings, this is how we get to know ourselves. This is the journey that we have to go on. Because no one can go on it for us. Because it won’t matter where we go in life, we’ll be lost if we don’t find ourselves first.