It's taken me a couple of days to circle back around since this was posted.

The first passage of this book "The people you encounter today..." is one of my favourite in the whole book. Marcus' profound ability to observe himself, his reactions, and thoughts to make rational judgements is amazing. He can see that people do things that can make him angry, frustrated, upset— but instead of blaming them and labelling them as "bad" or "evil" people, he digs deeper to make a profound observation of reality.

To many that sounds like an untrue statement, and I wouldn't blame anyone for dismissing it— but that's what makes this observation so profound.

For the Stoics, the idea that someone can anger you, or harm you with their words or (non-violent) actions is a fallacy. If someone is malicious towards me, and I retaliate in anger. This is the equivalent to seeing someone poke their own eye and to respond by hitting yourself in the hand with a hammer.

Each rational individual has control over their own mind and are responsible for their own thoughts and actions. The people we might feel are "meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly" don't have evil intent, and don't want to be "bad"— but the unexamined life makes one over-value the desired outcome so much that being this way seems like a small price to pay. In fact the opposite is the truth.

Interestingly, right out of the gate Marcus touches on the virtue of Justice. When I first started learning about Philosophy, Justice was my most mis-understood virtue.

When I thought about Justice, I thought about the "justice system". Holding people to account for their actions and issuing "fair punishment" for wrongdoing. I couldn't really reconcile this with what I was learning elsewhere. The idea of taking an active step with the aim of inflicting a negative experience on another seemed directly at odds with everything I was learning.

Not until I read Plato: The Republic did the true nature of Justice start to reveal itself. Socrates follows this train of thought to it's depths and comes to the understanding that causing harm to another (be it an innocent or criminal) will make them a worse person— therefore it can never be just, and in fact would be be unjust.

Socrates then goes on to describe that in order to be just, we must help the wrongdoer see the error of their ways and help them correct it— thereby helping them become a better person.

All of that to say— I think Marcus' clear-eyed view of Justice is what allowed him to introspect on these thoughts and feelings to this depth. After all, I can only imagine the types of things he had to deal with each day.