Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 12
Bonus:
Summary: WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AND BE FORGOTTEN!
Commentary:
If then, now that you are near your exit, setting behind you all other things, you will hold alone in reverence your ruling part, the spirit divine within you; if you will cease to dread the end of life, but rather fear to miss the beginning of life according to Nature, you will be a man, worthy of the ordered Universe that produced you; you will cease to be a stranger in your own country, gaping in wonder at every daily happening, caught up by this trifle or by that.
Live to succeed, not avoid failing.
Not a ton of comments on Book 12, so I'm just going to jump into the final overview.
I've said it several times, but the basic issue with reading all of Meditations is that it's really repetitive. Some minor variant of "memento mori" is probably in there, on average, every other page.
Again, that's not MA's fault, since the whole thing is basically just his journal, not a text book or whatever.
As a philosophy, I think stoicism is decent. You're gonna die, live up to your virtues, worry about yourself (it's all you can do) is all good advice. I don't think I'd hand someone the whole text as a way of learning it though.
If I was going to construct my own 5FSOB I think I'd probably just excerpt whatever section presents the whole thing the best (11.18?) and call it a day.
Projectwise, I learned not to get in the middle of too many different multi-part things at once. And not to try to paraphrase every line.
I'm gonna finish up 1984 next, then I'm into poetry for April.
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