Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VI, §39 (180 CE) Translated by Gregory Hays
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When and why it was written
- When
- Around 170 CE, in the private notebooks.
- Why
- Marcus did not choose his court, his co-emperor, or his generals. The note is about the people he was given.
What it means
Two instructions, and the second is the harder one. Accepting your circumstances is a familiar Stoic move. Loving the specific people inside them is not.
Marcus is refusing a common escape: tolerating your situation while holding the people in it at a distance. He treats the people as part of what fate handed over, and therefore part of what has to be met properly.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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Meditations, 180 CE
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