Why did Marcus Aurelius write his Meditations? It wasn’t for an audience. It wasn’t simply to practice his Greek or his rhetorical abilities—he was already good at all those things. The book lacks an author’s note and he never seemed to have told anyone about his intentions, so we can’t know for sure.
But there are two clues that, when put together, provide an answer as good as any. Have you noticed how much of Meditations is about other people? The opening, “Debts and Lessons,” makes up nearly ten percent of the book. Almost every other page has at least one quote or one story or one mention of a story about somebody else.
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And in todays Daily Stoic excerpt, Ryan discusses Epictesus's quote about where our anxiety comes from: "When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, 'What do they want?' For if a person wasn't wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?"
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