| Awards and advertisements. Celebrity scandals and local gossip. Silly worries and petty rivalries. People arguing for no reason. People trying to accumulate more than they could ever need. This is what we do, isn't it? What we've always done? In one of the more cynical passages of Meditations, Marcus Aurelius describes life in Rome as the "pointless bustling of processions, opera arias, herds of sheep and cattle, military exercises. A bone flung to pet poodles, a little food in the fish tank. The miserable servitude of ants, scampering of frightened mice, puppets jerked on strings." We fight over things. We entertain ourselves with trivialities. We miss the point, we waste this thing called existence—led by our perceptions, our insecurities, our fears. Stoicism is supposed to be a dash of clarity. It's a hard dose of perspective. That's what Marcus was doing in the passage, contemptuously dismissing so much of what people take for granted, trying, as he says later in Meditations, to strip things of the legend that encrusts them. Too much of life is froth and bubble. Too much of it is servitude and stupidity, being jerked around like a puppet. You're better than that. Time is too short for that. Wake up. Stop it. Show up. Be the person philosophy tried to make you. See what it tried to show you. P.S. Meditations is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization and strength. Yet totally lost to time to the vast majority of people out there! It's lost in the endless titles in dusty old libraries. But it doesn't have to be for you! That's why we created a premium leatherbound edition to stand the test of time and allow you to pass on its wisdom from one generation to the next. And if you want to make sure you squeeze all the practical philosophy out of the book, we've got you covered with How To Read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (A Daily Stoic Guide). It's designed to give you context, fill in the blanks, and illustrate how to apply the same "spiritual exercises" Marcus used to improve your own life. *** | 
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