You Have the Option
Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: to accept this event with humility, to treat this person as he should be treated, to approach this thought with care so that nothing irrational slips in.
~Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
Are you familiar with Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken? I imagine you are, as it is a pretty popular one.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
Every single day of our lives includes moments of two roads diverging. Every single day, we have choices we have to make as to which road we are going to travel.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Frost was just taking a walk through the woods one day, and this poem came to mind. But, I don’t think most people read it that way. Most people look beyond the obvious and see the metaphorical meaning, the reflection of what our lives are like, when they read these words. Marcus Aurelius certainly did…. wait, what?
Obviously, I’m joking. Aurelius wasn’t familiar with Frost’s poem. He couldn’t speak English. Also, he died more than 1700 years before it was written. But, I’m pretty sure it was the language barrier that served as the primary obstacle.
Seriously though, Marcus Aurelius recognized something very important about our way of living. We can choose, for the most part, to what extent we allow something to affect our actions and thoughts. This is a recurring theme in Stoic philosophy.
While our lives can be affected by outside forces, those outside forces cannot penetrate to the interior of our being, unless we allow them to do so. We have a choice, or as Marcus says, “You have the option…”
So, what are you going to let disturb your interior self? What are you going to let into your life that could potentially be a bother? Or, maybe it will be nothing at all. You have that option.
