Marcus Aurelius must have wondered what he did to deserve all this. First, he lost his father at age three. Then he was pulled from his first love, philosophy, and pushed into politics. When he finally became emperor, roughly 200 years of peace exploded into 19 years of border wars and civil strife.
There was a plague.
There were floods.
He had crippling health problems.
At some point, as he buried another one of his children, as he wept over the ceaseless toll from disease and pestilence, he must have thought: Haven’t I given enough? When will this end? What fresh horrors await?
Yet somehow, someway, he never managed to give himself over to this despair. He kept going.
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And in today's Daily Stoic video, Ryan discusses why the Stoics cherished and preached the value of recognizing the interconnectedness of everything, every being in the world, and how that belief guided them to treating their fellow human beings with love and respect.
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