Makes me feel like he is a regular guy. There is hope for me.
No one could ever accuse you of being quick-witted.
All right, but there are plenty of other things you can’t claim you “haven’t got in you.” Practice the virtues you can show: honesty, gravity, endurance, austerity, resignation, abstinence, patience, sincerity, moderation, seriousness, high-mindedness. Don’t you see how much you have to offer—beyond excuses like “can’t”? And yet you still settle for less.
Or is it some inborn condition that makes you whiny and grasping and obsequious, makes you complain about your body and curry favor and show off and leaves you so turbulent inside?
No. You could have broken free a long way back. And then you would have been only a little slow. “Not so quick on the uptake.”
And you need to work on that as well—that slowness. Not something to be ignored, let alone to prize.
Meditations 5:5.
One of us! One of us!
Seriously, though. It is reassuring to see that even a man like Marcus Aurelius had a noisy, self-critical brain.
Practice the virtues you can show.
Let’s do that today.