Seventeen.

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For Better or For Worse,

it's over.

"Meditations."

Last week, my Humanities professor assigned us to read "Meditations," a collection of thoughts, reflections, and ideals by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. It's technically classified as a 'self-help' book, and I'm not going to lie: it's actually pretty ballin. Aurelius was all about change and purpose, not fearing death and being a good person; he definitely knew what was up. Here a few excerpts from it - I'd encourage you to read them and think about life for a little bit. It's an eye-opener, believe me.

2.13 "Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles, 'diving into the things that lie beneath' and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them, never realizing that all you have to do is be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely. To worship it is to keep it from being muddied with turmoil and becoming aimless and dissatisfied with nature - divine and human. What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad - as terrible a blindness as the kind that can't tell white from black."

2.17 "Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting fame: uncertain. Sum up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. Then what can guide us? Only philosophy. Which means making sure that the power within stays safe and free from assault, superior to pleasure and pain, doing nothing randomly or dishonestly and with imposture, not dependent on anyone else's doing something or not doing it. And making sure that it accepts what happens and what it is dealt as coming from the same place it came from. And above all, it accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed. If it doesn't hurt the individual elements to change continually into one another, why are people afraid of all of them changing and separating? It's a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil."

4.20 "Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was - no better and no worse. This applies, I think, even to 'beautiful' things in ordinary life - physical objects, artworks. Does anything truly beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does - or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those suddenly improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?"

5.1 "At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: 'I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into this world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?'

-But it's nicer here...

So you were born to feel nice? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you're not willing to do what your nature demands?

-But we have to sleep sometime...

Agreed. But nature set a limit on that - as it did on eating and drinking. And you're over the limit. You've had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you're still below your quota. You don't love yourself enough. Or you'd love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they're really possessed by what they do, they'd rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts."

6.15 "Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold? Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it's gone."

8.19 "Everything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What's surprising about that? Even the sun will tel you, 'I have a purpose,' and the other gods as well. And why were you born? For pleasure? See if that answer will stand up to questioning."

10. 29 "Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?"

12.36 "You've lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred - what's the difference? The laws make no distinction. And to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge but by Nature, who first invited you in - why is that so terrible? Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor: 'But I've only gotten through three acts...!' Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace - the same grace shown to you."