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April   6th

PREPARE YOURSELF    FOR NEGATIVITY

“When   you first   rise    in  the morning tell    yourself:   I   will    encounter   busybodies, ingrates,

egomaniacs, liars,  the jealous and cranks. They    are all stricken    with    these   afflictions because

they    don’t   know    the difference  between good    and evil.   Because I   have    understood  the beauty  of

good    and the ugliness    of  evil,   I   know    that    these   wrong-doers are still   akin    to  me  .   .   .   and that

none    can do  me  harm,   or  implicate   me  in  ugliness—nor    can I   be  angry   at  my  relatives   or  hate

them.   For we  are made    for cooperation.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS,   MEDITATIONS,    2.1

ou can be certain as clockwork that at some point today you’re going to interact with someone who
seems like a jerk (as we all have been). The question is: Are you going to be ready for it?
This exercise calls to mind a joke from the eighteenth-century writer and witticist Nicolas Chamfort,
who remarked that if you “swallow a toad every morning,” you’ll be fortified against anything else
disgusting that might happen the rest of the day. Might it not be better to understand up front—right when
you wake up—that other people often behave in selfish or ignorant ways (the toad) than it is to nibble it
throughout the day?
But there is a second part to this, just as there is a second half of Marcus’s quote: “No one can
implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relative or hate him.” The point of this preparation is
not to write off everyone in advance. It’s that, maybe, because you’ve prepared for it, you’ll be able to act
with patience, forgiveness, and understanding.