Recently I picked up the book Meditations written by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. History, especially history from the Classical Greek and Roman times, interests me so when I heard about this book by one the great Roman Emperors, I had to pick it up. And it was less than two dollars! I won’t go into detail trying to summarize the book but it is basically a collection of writings/meditations that Marcus Aurelius wrote down at some point during his time as emperor. The writings are believed to have originally been private reflections written down for personal meditation but have since been put together into one of the most famous books in history.
Based on the ideas of stoicism, Mediations emphasizes the principles that lead to a good life; character traits such as virtue, simplicity, and always thinking about good things. Learning to be content in whatever situation you’re in leads to happiness and no one except yourself can take that away from you. There are many good lessons that I found while reading this book that I hope will stick with me. Its not a very long book but it is full of good thoughts that can really make you think about what’s important and what’s not important.
Anyways, I’m happy I picked this book up and I’m sure I’ll be reading it again in the future some time. Even though it was written almost 2000 years ago it is still full of very relevant ideas that can really be useful to anybody.