Listening takes 51 minutes.
This is a Christian station. Some of my best friends these days are Catholics or other faiths, and they all tell me that I am a believer. I tell them that my primary ethical system is from Marcus Aurelius, whose reign ended 180 AD. However, his Stoic ideas predate Jesus.
I have read Meditations, the little book of Aurelius’s personal maxims, over and over and memorized parts. The original manuscript was lost for several hundred years, then rediscovered and preserved. It is one of five books that have been in continuous publication since the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s.
I LIKE the poetic quality of the George Long translation (this is 45c on Amazon Kindle):
But some people find the newer translation by Gregory Hays easier:
Here are a few sample quotes from the Long edition:
If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all this in a short time. Hippocrates after curing many diseases himself fell sick and died.. and lice killed Socrates... What means all this? ...All human things are smoke, and nothing at all; and it is not for us, but for the gods, to settle whether we play the play out, or only a part of it. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and tend thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. ... Do not act as if thou wert going to live 10,000 years. While thou can, while you are able, be good.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
Remind yourself that it is not the future or the past which bears down on you but the present always the present which becomes an even smaller thing when isolated in this way.
It all depends on your opinion of it and that depends on you. Jettison your opinion and you will find yourself like a sailor rounding the headland on a calm sea in a bay without waves.
Bad luck borne nobly is good luck.
160. HEALTHCARE BUTCHERY INTERVIEW PART 1