Marcus Aurelius, nicknamed The Wise (April 26, 121–March 17, 180), is considered the last of Ancient Rome’s Five Good Emperors and one of the most influential Stoic philosophers.
Meditations is widely considered to be one of the most influential books ever written. It's a timeless collection of his personal writings and is considered a portal to his inner life. Meditations has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers, and readers throughout the centuries.
The questions he tried to answer in Meditations are timeless. Still today, we ask ourselves: Why are we here? How can I cope with the stresses and pressures of daily life? How can I do what is right? How can I cope with loss and pain? How can I handle misfortune? How do we live when we know that one day we won’t?
Here are some lessons from Marcus Aurelius's considerations on the topic of our impermanence and how to live a good life:
"Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already or is impossible to see."
"Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable."
"Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work."
"Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?"
"Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see."