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July 27th

WHERE IS ANYTHING BETTER?

“Indeed, if you find anything in human life better than justice, truth,

self-control, courage—in short, anything better than the

sufficiency of your own mind, which keeps you acting according

to the demands of true reason and accepting what fate gives you

outside of your own power of choice—I tell you, if you can see

anything better than this, turn to it heart and soul and take full

advantage of this greater good you’ve found.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 3.6.1

e’ve all chased things we thought would matter. At some point, we
all thought that money would be the answer, that success was the
highest prize, that the undying love of a beautiful person would finally
make us feel warm inside. What do we find when we actually attain these
sacred objects? Not that they are empty or meaningless—only those who
have never had them think that—but what we find is that they are not
enough.
Money creates problems. Climbing one mountain exposes another,
higher peak. There is never enough love.
There is something better out there: real virtue. It is its own reward.
Virtue is the one good that reveals itself to be more than we expect and
something that one cannot have in degrees. We simply have it or we don’t.
And that is why virtue—made up as it is of justice, honesty, discipline, and
courage—is the only thing worth striving for.