| You're tough. You're firm. You don't get bothered by things. You keep yourself under control. You know a thing or two about life. You have earned your wisdom the hard way—by experience. Good. But you're missing something else just as important and perhaps more impressive. "If ever any one, possessed of power, had grounds for thinking himself the best and most enlightened among his contemporaries, it was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius," the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote. Marcus was an absolute ruler of nearly the entire world. He was strong and firm, wise and resilient, "but what was less to be expected from his Stoical breeding," Mill said, was "the tenderest heart." What a lovely thing to have said of you—that you're nicer and kinder than expected, nicer and kinder than perhaps you could have gotten away with. Marcus Aurelius probably would have attributed this tender heart to his mother (as we talked about in our podcast with his biographer, Donald Robertson), but it was by no means at odds with Stoic philosophy. He saw this tenderness in Antoninus and in Sextus, who taught him, he said in Meditations (keepsake leather edition available at The Painted Porch), "to be free of passion but full of love." That's the good surprise. Not just strength, but softness where it matters. Not just control, but care. To not only be wise, but to be attentive, compassionate, and patient with the people in our lives. *** |
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