Marcus Aurelius on How Meeting Reality on Its Own Terms Helps Us Live Through Our Difficulties

“Accept everything which happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, the health of the universe.”

Maria Popova
Brain Pickings

“At bottom the whole concern of both morality,” William James wrote in contemplating the human search for meaning, “is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? … If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission… or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent?” The pioneering psychologist and philosopher was reaching across time, space, and cultures to perch on the shoulders of another giant of thought: the Roman emperor and great Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius (April 26, 121–March 17, 180), who had articulated this selfsame idea nearly eighteen centuries earlier. 

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