Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not (only) of the the same blood or seek, but that it participates in (the same) intelligence and (the same) portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.
This is the first "proverb" from Book Two of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. The very first entire sentence of this "proverb" struck me as quite interesting. Marcus Aurelius begins his morning with a sort of self dedicated prayer. In a way it was his To Do list or plan of action for the day. Perhaps we should begin the day by telling ourselves the same thing. "When you wake up this morning you will meet evil, nasty, awful people" (a very rough paraphrasing). But the important part as you recite this is to acknowledge that you too are one of those people. You are an evil, nasty, awful person. I am an evil, nasty, awful person. Paul claimed the title "chief of sinners." I think I often vie him for it. Sure, there are other evil, nasty, people in the world. I bump into them on a daily basis. But I think I am caught up in there with them.
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