keeping your mind calm—reliably sizing up what’s around
you—and ready to make good use of whatever happens? So
that Judgment can look the event in the eye and say, “This is
what you really are, regardless of what you may look like.”
While Adaptability adds, “You’re just what I was looking
for.” Because to me the present is a chance for the exercise
of rational virtue—civic virtue—in short, the art that men
share with gods. Both treat whatever happens as wholly
natural; not novel or hard to deal with, but familiar and
easily handled.
- Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day,
without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense. - The gods live forever and yet they don’t seem annoyed at
having to put up with human beings and their behavior
throughout eternity. And not only put up with but actively
care for them.
And you—on the verge of death—you still refuse to care
for them, although you’re one of them yourself.
- It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are
inescapable. Just try to escape your own. - Whenever the force that makes us rational and social
encounters something that is neither, then it can reasonably
regard it as inferior.