Why You Think A New Place Will Fix It | Stoicism

#stoicism #stoicphilosophy #marcusaurelius There is a place you think about when things get bad. A cabin, a coast, a flat in a different city. You have probably looked at it recently. Marcus Aurelius wrote one paragraph about that, and it catches you mid-thought. Men seek retreats for themselves, he writes, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains. Then the clause that does the damage: and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. He is not describing other people. He files the whole impulse as a mark of the most common sort of men. His claim is narrow and testable. For it is in thy power, whenever thou shalt choose, to retire into thyself. And nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul. But he attaches a condition most people skip: it only works when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity. Then he audits himself out loud, four discontents, each closing on the same four words: and be quiet at last. Other people. His lot. His body. And the desire of the thing called fame, which gets the longest answer of the four. Chapters 0:00 The place you think about when things get bad 0:40 Men seek retreats for themselves 1:30 The one man who could actually have gone 2:46 Nowhere quieter than your own mind 3:40 Tranquillity is the good ordering of the mind 4:39 The ten-second test 6:26 He audits himself out loud 7:56 Providence or atoms 9:58 The thing called fame 10:47 The whole earth is a point 13:24 The two principles he keeps to hand 16:12 The promontory 18:58 Back to the place you were imagining Public domain: Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (tr. George Long, 1862). New video every week.