Most of us don't live underneath a king and fewer of us still will ever be a king, at least in the sense of ruling a country by hereditary right. Even Marcus Aurelius would have conceded that this is wonderful, for he understood that most kings were bad, and that the job was bad for most of the people who had it.
Yet as we've talked about, the Stoics were still fond of the metaphor of the sovereign. Musonius Rufus would say that a philosopher was inherently a kingly person, and Seneca would write that to be fit to rule one had to first rule themselves.
So when we look at the lives of the Stoics, that's what we see. Men and women who were, to borrow a line from the Bible, diligent in their business and thus fit to stand before kings. Cleanthes, carrying water to the gardens, as if it was philosophical business. Musonius Rufus teaching his students to have the strictest of standards in their rhetoric and writing. Cato insisting on honesty and transparency and accountability in government despite the corruption around him. Antoninus, who was in fact emperor, but so dedicated to the job, as Marcus Aurelius observed, that he scheduled his bathroom breaks.
We don't have to hold supreme power to be supremely powerful. We don't have to 'wear the purple,' as they said of the emperor, to stand out. No, we just have to show up. Do a great job. Hold ourselves to high standards. We don't need to be honored to be honorable. That's not something the position gives, it's something we give the position.
The third book in The Stoic Virtues Series (after Courage Is CallingandDiscipline Is Destiny), Right Thing, Right Now is all about the virtue of justice, which to the Stoics was the source of the other virtues. Courage in pursuit of injustice? Discipline dedicated to an entirely selfish or destructive goal? That's not how Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or Zeno would have defined the good life. The Stoics were very clear: the whole point of life, the whole point of the philosophy was to direct a person towards doing what was right.
Right Thing, Right Now is a call to do that. To think of justice not as some abstract notion that happens outside of our control and influence, but as a daily imperative. Not something we get, but something we do. Not something we demand from other people, but something we demand of ourselves.
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