Marcus Aurelius: A Disciplined Soul

55.3-3.7 Framing Series, Set 3 of 3 (Ancient Philosophers): Essay 7

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Related: Introduction to the Foundation Series · Introduction to the Load-Bearing Series · Introduction to the Framing Series · Framing Series, Set 1 (Parables) · Framing Series, Set 2 (Thinkers) · Framing Series, Set 3 (Philosophers) · Essay 1 (Philosophers, Socrates) · Essay 2 (Philosophers, Plato) · Essay 3 (Philosophers, Aristotle) · Essay 4 (Philosophers, Heraclitus) · Essay 5 (Philosophers, Epictetus) · Essay 6 (Philosophers, Seneca)

Welcome

I have thousands of entries in the Notes app on my phone. Some are only a sentence or two. Others contain long stretches of dictation recorded while driving, walking, working outside, or lying awake after an idea arrived at an inconvenient hour. There are essay fragments, prayers, questions, reminders, quotations, lists of people I need to call, observations about my daughters, coaching reflections, business ideas, travel plans, and thoughts I do not yet understand well enough to place anywhere else.

My system would probably look chaotic to almost anyone opening it for the first time. Titles are inconsistent. Several entries begin with words that made complete sense when I typed them but offer little help months later. One thought may appear in three different notes because I forgot I had already recorded it. Voice dictation occasionally changes a philosopher’s name into something absurd. My Plato essay, for example, contained far more references to Play-Doh than the ancient Greek philosopher. I do not always discover the mistake until long after the original thought has disappeared.

Still, I return to those notes constantly. They are not a polished journal or an organized account of my life. Most were never written for another person to read. They are reminders sent from one version of myself to another: Do not forget this. Look more closely. Call this person. You handled that poorly. There may be something here worth understanding.

That is part of what first led me back toward Meditations. Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the Roman world, yet the surviving work most closely associated with him was not a public speech, political defense, or account of his victories. It was a collection of private reminders. He wrote to correct himself, steady himself, question himself, and return himself to the kind of person he believed he should be.

There is something reassuring about discovering that even an emperor needed reminders.

In Conversation with Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius was born in AD 121 and became Roman emperor in 161. For part of his reign, he shared imperial authority with Lucius Verus. He later governed through military conflict, political strain, personal loss, and an epidemic that spread across much of the empire. His responsibilities were not theoretical. Decisions made around him could affect armies, cities, families, and the future of Rome itself.

Yet the Marcus encountered in Meditations rarely sounds like a ruler trying to preserve his reputation. He sounds like a person trying to preserve his character. Written in Greek and apparently never prepared for publication, the entries repeatedly call him back to patience, fairness, humility, reason, service, mortality, and the obligations human beings owe one another.

The repetition is important. Marcus did not write a principle once and then appear to consider the matter settled. He kept returning to many of the same concerns because apparently he continued needing the reminders. Anger toward difficult people, the influence of praise and criticism, the temptation to waste the present, and the danger of confusing position with worth appear again and again. I find that repetition more revealing than a perfectly organized philosophy would have been. It suggests a man practicing ideas he understood intellectually but still had to work to live.

That distinction changes the way I read him. I am less interested in Marcus Aurelius as the nearly flawless philosopher-emperor imagined by later generations. I am more interested in the tired, burdened, occasionally frustrated man who kept discovering that authority over others did not remove the difficulty of governing himself.

Power can magnify character, but it can also insulate a person from the correction needed to form it. The more authority someone possesses, the easier it becomes to confuse agreement with wisdom, obedience with respect, and privilege with virtue. Marcus lived inside that danger. He could command armies and issue laws, yet no title could make him patient, honest, restrained, or just. Those decisions remained personal.

His private writing therefore carries a tension I find difficult to escape: Who governs the person entrusted with governing others?

The Question

Most of us will never carry authority resembling that of a Roman emperor. We still exercise power every day. Parents possess power within a family. Leaders influence careers, opportunities, and confidence. Customers affect livelihoods. Teachers can awaken curiosity or quietly diminish it. Wealth, age, knowledge, physical strength, social standing, and even the ability to command another person’s attention can create forms of power we do not always recognize.

The question is not whether I possess power. The more honest question is what that power is doing to me.

Will I carry responsibility without allowing it to quietly deform my character?

I would prefer to believe that my values remain stable regardless of circumstance. Experience tells me otherwise. I am more patient after a good night’s sleep than after several interrupted ones. I listen better when I am not rushed. I extend grace more easily when I do not feel threatened, embarrassed, or ignored. Under pressure, qualities I sincerely believe in can become less available than I imagined.

That does not make the values false. It reveals that believing in them is different from being formed by them. Character is not proved when every condition supports the response I hope to offer. It becomes visible when tiredness, responsibility, disappointment, recognition, frustration, or influence gives me permission to become someone else.

Marcus Aurelius leaves me with nowhere to hide behind good intentions. His private reminders keep bringing my conduct back to whatever is happening now. It is easy for me to think about the husband, father, leader, or friend I hope to become over time. It is harder when someone interrupts me while I am concentrating, when I am tired and one of my daughters wants my attention, or when I enter a conversation already convinced that I am right. Those ordinary moments tell me considerably more about my self-government than the values I can describe when nothing is testing them.

I am not sure anyone completely masters that work. Marcus certainly did not write as though he had. I used to think needing the same reminder repeatedly meant I had somehow failed to learn the lesson. I am beginning to see it differently. Some lessons may remain with us precisely because we have to keep returning to them, each time with a little more awareness of what pulls us away.

Where I Meet This Question

In 2000, my family traveled to Italy to celebrate my dad’s retirement and the new millennium. It was my first visit to Europe, despite having already spent several years traveling back and forth to Asia. We stayed for a week at a vineyard near Impruneta, outside Florence, followed by another week in Rome. The trip should have been one of the most memorable experiences of my young life. Rome was filled with places I had encountered through history, religion, art, and imagination. Gladiator had recently been released, which added another layer to seeing the Roman world for the first time. I had received an opportunity many people never experience, and I was sharing it with the people who had known me longest.

It was also a difficult period for our family. My mom was already well into her battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and travel exposed some of the confusion and strain that had begun changing daily life. I had recently graduated from college, family dynamics felt unusually close and complicated, and part of my attention was already fixed on Indonesia, where I would travel after leaving Italy. I was eager for what came next while struggling to receive what was already in front of me. None of those circumstances excuses my behavior, but together they help me understand why I was not fully present.

At times, I withdrew from the family and declined outings everyone else took together. I missed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and other places throughout Tuscany that I would gladly visit today. I did not have dramatic outbursts or intentionally try to diminish the trip. My failure was quieter. I allowed frustration, anticipation, discomfort, and my own internal preoccupations to separate me from experiences my parents had worked hard to give us. I was surrounded by history and family, yet some part of me remained somewhere else.

My mom’s illness was certainly part of that tension. I did not possess the maturity to understand what she was experiencing or the patience I wish I had brought to those days. I sometimes focused on what the trip was supposed to be and on the experience I believed I was losing. I was old enough to recognize that something serious was happening, but not yet formed enough to respond consistently with the tenderness the moment required. She was gradually losing capacities she never would have chosen to surrender, while I sometimes experienced her illness primarily through how it affected me.

More than a quarter century later, I can offer context to that younger version of myself. I was frightened, inexperienced, eager for independence, and watching someone I loved become less recognizable in ways none of us could stop. Context helps me understand my reactions, but it does not require me to pretend they represented my best character. I wish I had been gentler with my mom. I also wish I had walked out the door more often, joined my family, and received the trip as the extraordinary gift it was. I cannot recover the places I chose not to see or the hours I spent apart from people whose presence I appreciate far more today.

I began writing this essay during a long weekend when family and many of my dad’s friends had gathered to celebrate his ninetieth birthday. Being surrounded by people who have known us for decades can stir gratitude, affection, old family patterns, fatigue, and emotions that are difficult to separate from one another. I could feel some of that same internal pressure returning, though I now recognized it more quickly. I do not want those emotions to quietly remove me from experiences I may later wish I had entered more fully.

Marcus Aurelius often wrote about returning to the work before him without becoming trapped in self-condemnation. I find that more useful than endlessly retrying the case against my younger self. I cannot return to Italy in 2000 and become the son or brother I now wish I had been. What I can do is notice when that old pattern begins showing itself again. When someone I love needs more of my time or attention than I expected to give, I sometimes feel the same impatience or urge to withdraw. I recognize it sooner now. What happened with my mom cannot be repaired by regret, but it can still influence whether I stay in the conversation today.

I meet the same question in less painful circumstances. Over the years, I have been stopped several times for speeding and, more often than I deserved, received a warning rather than a ticket. I was usually respectful, answered questions directly, and accepted responsibility instead of arguing. Perhaps those things influenced the officers’ decisions. Perhaps circumstances I could not see contributed as well.

For a long time, I received each warning primarily as relief. I was grateful to avoid the expense and inconvenience, told myself I should slow down, and then eventually found myself moving too quickly again. The warning became something fortunate that had happened to me rather than a form of grace asking something from me.

More recently, I began asking a different question: What should change because I was treated more generously than the situation required?

That question eventually reached beyond driving. I began thinking about the number of times someone had given me another opportunity, interpreted my motives generously, overlooked an error, made an introduction, shared knowledge, or simply believed I could do better than I had just done. I had usually remembered those moments with gratitude. What I had considered less often was whether receiving that kind of generosity created any responsibility in me afterward. A warning means considerably less if I simply feel fortunate and continue driving exactly as before.

I still catch myself driving faster than necessary, whether because I am running late for something I should have left earlier to attend or because I simply enjoy the performance of my car. I do not offer this as a completed transformation. I have simply become less comfortable receiving repeated mercy without allowing it to alter my conduct.

My daughters have also become unexpected teachers in this work. One of them has repeatedly chosen honesty over self-protection. More than once, she has come to us and admitted something she could easily have concealed. She knows there may be a consequence, yet she tells the truth before anyone confronts her. Each time, my immediate responsibility is to address what happened. Yet beneath that responsibility is another choice. I can react so strongly to the mistake that honesty becomes more frightening than concealment, or I can make clear that telling the truth does not erase the behavior while still honoring the courage required to admit it.

Children notice whether adults truly value honesty or merely enjoy hearing the truth when it is convenient. I want my daughters to understand that confession does not always remove a consequence, but it should preserve the possibility of trust. Each time she chooses honesty, I find myself examining whether my response will support the character I hope she continues developing.

There is humility in being corrected by a child. Marcus began Meditations by recalling what he had learned from relatives, teachers, friends, and others who shaped him. He did not present character as a private achievement. He recognized that much of what was best in him had been received through other people. I am learning the same lesson from people young enough to need help tying their shoes.

Self-government also appears in choices so ordinary that they would hardly deserve mention in most accounts of a life. My phone often follows me from room to room. It contains my work, writing, research, photographs, messages, calendar, notes, and access to almost any question I might decide needs an immediate answer. It is useful enough that keeping it nearby rarely feels unreasonable.

It also makes partial presence remarkably easy. I can sit near Hanna and the girls while remaining mentally attached to a conversation, article, email, or idea somewhere else. No one needs to ask me to leave the room because part of me has already left.

I have begun placing my phone on the kitchen island more intentionally. This is not a dramatic family rule, and I do not follow it perfectly. Sometimes I pick it up again minutes later because I remembered something I believe cannot wait. Still, the small physical distance creates a decision point. I have to stand, walk toward it, and choose to reenter whatever is waiting on the screen.

That pause is often enough to expose the weakness of my explanation. The message can wait. The article will remain. The thought can occasionally be forgotten without damaging the world. Meanwhile, one of my daughters may be telling a story that makes almost no sense but is extremely important to her because it happened 20 minutes earlier.

None of these examples involves anything resembling imperial responsibility, which may be part of why Marcus remains useful to me. Most days I am not being asked to make one enormous decision that reveals my character. I am being asked to make dozens of very small ones: whether to remain in a conversation, how to respond when someone tells me the truth, whether to pick up the phone again, whether to learn something from a mistake I would rather explain away. Most of them will be forgotten almost immediately. Together, they are still forming me.

The Notes app on my phone records part of this continuing conversation. I sometimes write after handling something poorly, not because recording the mistake repairs it, but because I do not want frustration or embarrassment to become the only lesson I carry forward. I ask what I was protecting, why I reacted so strongly, what I failed to see, and how I might recognize the pattern sooner next time.

I wish insight produced immediate and permanent change. Usually it does not. I can understand impatience in the morning and repeat it by evening. I can write persuasively about attention and then realize I have been looking at my phone while someone I love is speaking. Marcus helps me accept that inconsistency without excusing it.

What I Hope My Daughters Remember

My daughters will eventually carry forms of responsibility I cannot predict. They may become parents, leaders, caregivers, teachers, professionals, business owners, volunteers, or trusted friends. People may depend upon their decisions. Others may seek their approval, follow their direction, or remain silent because challenging them feels costly.

I hope they learn early that responsibility does not make anyone more important than the people affected by it. A title may increase authority, but it should also deepen obligation. The person with greater power carries a greater responsibility to listen carefully, correct fairly, and remain aware of how easily convenience can be purchased at another person’s expense.

I also hope they become suspicious whenever success begins making self-examination feel unnecessary. Praise can be pleasant, but it is not always accurate. Criticism can be painful, but it is not always wrong. The people most willing to agree with them may not be the people most committed to their growth. I hope each daughter finds at least a few friends who love her enough to tell her when she is becoming someone they no longer recognize.

There will be moments when they handle responsibility poorly. They may speak too sharply, protect their pride, ignore someone who deserved their attention, or use an advantage without appreciating the burden it placed on someone else. I do not want them to believe that one failure defines their character. I also do not want them to become skilled at converting every failure into an explanation.

An apology should occasionally cost something. It may require changing a habit, repairing trust, surrendering an advantage, or admitting that our intentions were better than our conduct. I hope my daughters understand that remorse becomes meaningful when it begins altering the next choice.

I hope they learn that gentleness does not diminish strength. The most secure people I have known rarely needed to display their authority. They could remain firm without humiliation, correct another person without enjoying the correction, and make difficult decisions without pretending those decisions carried no human cost.

One day my daughters may read some of the notes I have accumulated. I am not entirely comfortable with that possibility. They would find incomplete thoughts, repeated worries, ambitions that went nowhere, judgments I later reconsidered, and reminders written because I had failed to live something I already knew. They might also find how often their names appear.

I hope they would not read those entries as instructions from a father who believed he had solved life for them. I would rather they discover evidence that their dad kept trying to become more worthy of the responsibilities he had been given.

Leadership Through This Lens

Leadership gives other people reasons to edit what they say around us. The higher someone rises, the more likely it becomes that employees will soften disagreement, withhold an inconvenient observation, or interpret an ordinary preference as an instruction. A leader may therefore receive less honest information at the exact moment honest information becomes more necessary.

I have seen how quickly a room can change when the person with the greatest authority expresses an opinion too early. A question that might have produced genuine discussion becomes a request for agreement. People begin improving the leader’s idea rather than considering whether it is the right idea. No one has been ordered to remain silent, yet authority has already shaped what feels safe to contribute.

I am not immune to this. Positivity, energy, and confidence have served me well throughout my career, but those same qualities can sometimes occupy too much space. I can become enthusiastic about an idea before another person has finished explaining the problem. I can offer examples so quickly that someone else’s experience becomes the introduction to my own. I can intend to encourage discussion while unconsciously directing it toward the conclusion I already prefer.

Self-government in leadership sometimes means speaking. At other times, it means delaying my contribution long enough for another person’s thinking to develop without having to compete with mine. That restraint is difficult because an immediate answer can feel helpful and efficient. It can also satisfy the part of me that enjoys being the one with the answer.

Coaching has pressed directly on this tendency. Advising allows me to draw from experience and offer a recommendation. Coaching often requires me to remain with another person’s question instead of relieving the tension by answering it. The distinction can be uncomfortable. Silence may feel unproductive even when it is creating the room another person needs to think.

Marcus Aurelius reminds me that leadership begins before the visible decision. I have left conversations convinced that I was protecting the quality of the work, only to reconsider later whether some part of me also wanted to be recognized as the person who saw the problem. I have corrected something that genuinely needed correcting and later realized that frustration influenced how I delivered the message. Coaching has made me especially aware of another version of this: I can ask what sounds like an open question while quietly hoping the other person will eventually arrive at the answer I already have in mind. From the outside, those behaviors may look reasonable. The harder work is being willing to examine what was governing me while I was doing them.

Leadership also increases the importance of small conduct because other people interpret what leaders repeatedly tolerate, reward, ignore, and model. A leader who speaks respectfully in a formal presentation but humiliates someone in a hallway has already communicated which behavior is more trustworthy. Culture is formed less by the language displayed on a wall than by what happens when pressure removes the time to perform.

This does not require leaders to become emotionally flat or endlessly patient. People become tired, make mistakes, misread situations, and occasionally respond poorly. Pretending otherwise only teaches others to conceal their own imperfections. The more difficult discipline is acknowledging the failure without using pressure, title, or good intentions to escape responsibility for it.

Some of the strongest leaders I have known needed correction like everyone else. What distinguished them was what happened after someone took the risk of offering it. They listened. They did not immediately explain themselves, pull rank, or make the conversation so uncomfortable that no one would try again. I have come to trust leaders more, not less, when I have watched them genuinely reconsider something they got wrong.

Marcus governed an empire while repeatedly reminding himself how he wanted to treat the people around him. My responsibilities are far smaller, but I recognize the danger. I have spent enough years doing certain kinds of work that experience can occasionally tempt me to listen for confirmation instead of discovery. I can become so focused on accomplishing something that I pay less attention to what the process feels like for the people doing it with me. And because I bring a great deal of energy into a room, I also have to remember that what feels like enthusiasm to me can sometimes make it harder for a quieter person to enter the conversation.

I doubt authority usually changes someone’s character in one dramatic moment. I suspect the greater danger is slower and much easier to justify. A behavior that once would have bothered us becomes understandable because we are under pressure. Then it becomes necessary because the work is important. Eventually we may stop noticing that we are asking everyone around us to absorb the cost of something we once would have corrected in ourselves.

Reflection Point

The greatest responsibility any of us carries is the responsibility of governing ourselves.

The Invitation: Practice Self-Government

• Write down one behavior you continue excusing because your intentions are good.
• Ask someone you trust how your authority, energy, or confidence affects the people around you.
• Pause before offering your opinion in one conversation where others may be waiting to hear it.
• Allow one uncomfortable memory to teach you without turning it into permanent self-condemnation.
• Respond to one act of honesty in a way that encourages truth without ignoring responsibility.
• Create one physical boundary between yourself and a distraction that repeatedly divides your presence.

Two Questions to Explore

1. What does pressure, influence, or responsibility repeatedly bring out in me?
2. Where do I need to correct myself before attempting to correct someone else?

Further Resources

• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Private philosophical reflections in which Marcus repeatedly examines his conduct, judgments, obligations, mortality, and relationships with others.
• Donald Robertson, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. An accessible exploration of Marcus Aurelius, Stoic practice, and the relationship between ancient philosophy and modern psychology.
• Frank McLynn, Marcus Aurelius: A Life. A detailed biography examining Marcus as emperor, military leader, family member, and student of philosophy.
• Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel. A close study of Meditations as a collection of spiritual and philosophical exercises rather than a conventional philosophical treatise.
• Anthony R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography. A historically grounded account of Marcus’ upbringing, imperial responsibilities, relationships, military campaigns, and philosophical development.
• Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, Lives of the Stoics. Short accounts of major Stoic figures and the ways their ideas were tested through public responsibility and personal conduct.

When I first opened Meditations, I expected the wisdom of an emperor. What I encountered was something more familiar: a person leaving reminders for himself because knowledge alone had not made him the person he hoped to become.

Marcus Aurelius could influence the direction of an empire, but he still had to decide how to respond to an irritating person, an unwelcome obligation, praise, illness, anger, grief, and the approach of death. His office expanded the reach of his decisions without simplifying the person required to make them.

My Notes app contains no philosophy likely to survive for two thousand years. Much of it will probably become meaningless when separated from the ordinary circumstances that produced it. There are names without explanation, ideas that never developed, reminders for tasks long completed, and questions I may never answer.

Still, those notes preserve a record more revealing than a list of accomplishments. They show how often I needed to remind myself to call someone, listen longer, speak more carefully, put the phone down, apologize, remain patient, reconsider a judgment, or become more grateful for a life I was in danger of moving through too quickly.

One day, my daughters may encounter some of them. Perhaps they will smile at the errors created by voice dictation or wonder why one unfinished idea appeared in several different places. They may find entries written before they could read, observations from family trips they barely remember, and concerns their dad never shared because he was still trying to understand them himself.

I hope they would recognize something beneath the disorder. They would not find a father pretending to be wise or a man who consistently lived according to everything he wrote. I hope they would simply find someone trying to hold himself accountable for the person he was becoming.

Marcus Aurelius leaves me with no reason to believe that self-government eventually becomes effortless. What strikes me instead is how often he had to start over. A colleague’s honesty can do that to me now. So can one of my daughters, a mistake I am still embarrassed by, or a line I wrote in my phone three months ago that I have already half forgotten to live by. None of it guarantees I will do better the next time. It just means I noticed the distance again, which is apparently the only part of this work that does not get easier.

Then, when the next moment arrives, we can return to the work once more.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Govern yourself before seeking to govern anything else.

Live. Lead. Love.
Billy

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