No Title 1.2

One's reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by George Hays. Some thoughts.

Really, be grateful one lived in this age, and not his age. He has to recede to logos due to a lack of books to read. After all, how much books do you expect when paper nor printing machine were invented? Papyrus has limited word density per piece, and copies of book are done by hand. If there are too many words...

One tend to think, or perhaps, majority of readers tend to think, Marcus leave these lessons for us to learn, that he is a Stoic. Probably. For one, it's clear that the Author (George Hays) mentioned the book without the title, was more of a diary, or a record of principles that Marcus learned. To learn a principles, Ray Dalio would make a mistake, before the principles is written down for future reference. Furthermore, Marcus's meditations isn't even purely principles. Whereas principles may be more unique, less repetitive; if you read his book, one find lots of repetitions. Example: to honor death.

Death is a common phenomena, and one could die soon after this article's published, who knows? Or one could die in a distant future... To think that one graduate not long ago, and not long ago is years back, and one feels like it's not long since 2022 and it's already 2024, and it won't be long before it's 2030 and 2054. Time passes without one knowing it, especially if one fills it with enjoyment.

Back to the topic. While it's not exactly true, one would write about something when one suddenly learn about something that happens recently in one's life. Albeit, it's a struggle. From what one learns, one tries to apply the lesson in the future. Yet, it's not always sucessful. One may fall for the trap again and again and again. Therefore, one'll learn again and again and again, and write it, blog it, again and again and again. If we assume the "books" as papyrus that goes to the right. That is, except book 1, the rest is like a diary record that, once finished, goes to another diary record, in chronological order; he may seem to struggle with difficulties in accepting death, hence he keeps writing about it book after book after book.

It so falls into one's mind. Humans aren't perfect, we already know that. So what makes us thing Stoic are perfect, or Stoic are following the principles that they wrote about? Probably meditations is a struggle that Marcus kept failing to attain, so he wrote it down, struggle again to attain and attain and attain. It's this struggle that one respect him for, as one of my idol/role model.

For the last person that one see this struggle and treat him as a role model, was Samuel Johnson.