Meditations By Marcus Aurelius

Intro: Stoicism

Fear. Fear is an emotion natural to humans and necessary for our survival. It helps us to make logical decisions because we learn to fear the consequences of our actions. But like all emotions, it is a double-edged sword. Even though fear is essential to our survival Ito is often portrayed as a negative emotion that we try to get rid of. As we get older, we see our fear hold us back instead of helping us progress forward.

There are two types of fears that humans have: innate or learned. Innate fears are fears we are born with. This can be a fear of heights, pain, predators, rapidly approaching objects and ancestral threats such as spiders or snakes. But these are not the fears that control us in our day-to-day lives. Instead learned fears such as that of dogs, the dark and stereotypes of different people. But these fears are ones we learn while we are still relatively young because of our environment and the people in our lives. But as we get older other fears are more predominant in our lives like maintaining our social status, change and death. But two of these fears are not even ones we can control. So, what is the point of having them?

That is the question that the Stoics emphasise: ‘What is to fear in that which you cannot control?’ Along with facing conditioned fears, Stoics believed in taking action and that can be reflected in Meditations. In fact, Marcus Aurelius often talks about how people should stop fixating on reading books but first focus on how they can apply what they learnt from one book in their own life. And there is plenty of knowledge in this book that you can apply to your own life.