“Indeed, if you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, self-control, courage — in short, anything better than the sufficiency of your own mind, which keeps you acting according to the demands of true reason and accepting what fate gives you outside of your own power of choice — I tell you, if you can see anything better than this, turn to it heart and soul and take full advantage of this greater good you’ve found.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 3.6.1
In today’s quote presented in The Daily Stoic, Marcus Aurelius is basically throwing down the gauntlet and saying “Look, if you can find something better than the stoic approach to life, then go for it.” But he’s saying it in that particular tone which means that he doesn’t think there is anything better.
I tend to agree with him. There are a lot of other things that seem like they will bring happiness or fulfillment. Ryan Holiday, author of the book, spells them all out in today’s chapter, and they’re the usual suspects: money, success, love, etc.
But these things all come up just short. They are good, make no mistake. They’re just not quite enough to bring true fulfillment. They will always leave you wanting more, at the end of the day.
Virtue, however — defined by Holiday as “justice, honesty, discipline, and courage”, and defined by me as “doing your best to do right” — now that’s another story.
Virtue is pure and absolute. There are no shades of gray with virtue, you either have it or you don’t. This is what the stoic is always pursuing, and always exercising their reason in an effort to do good, and “accepting what fate gives you outside of your own power of choice”. That’s virtue. And it’s the only thing worth pursuing, and the only thing that will truly fill you up.
