Advice from Ancient Rome

Marcus Aurelius kept a private diary. For roughly 700 years after his reign, no one in history mentions its existence until 906 AD when a book-collecting bishop finds a copy and begins a letter-writing campaign: "I have an old copy of the Emperor Marcus' most profitable book, so old indeed that it is altogether falling to pieces.… This I have had copied and am able to hand down to posterity in its new dress."

Thanks to this 10th-century word nerd, Meditations is a bestseller.

The book reads less like a diary and more like a list of profound reminders. Marcus wrote things down to define the person he aimed to be:

“Stop drifting. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.” (Book 3:14)

Write off your hopes? That sounds depressing but it isn’t. He was telling himself (and now us) to stop wasting time pining and longing. He’s saying sprint—go now, and make something good happen. His concern was not only for himself; the pages are filled with reminders to do good for others, and to be patient with those slow to develop this virtue:

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own (not of the same blood and birth), but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”

No one can implicate me in ugliness. Words to live by.

Sobbing, my daughter once asked why I lied to her about the Tooth Fairy. I didn’t see it coming. I said the first thing that came to my mind: I was trying to make something wonderful happen for you.

I asked if she liked discovering the tiny letters and the furniture rearranged in her dollhouse with scattered cake crumbs as evidence that the tooth fairy had hung out awhile. “Yes, I loved it! And I don’t want it to stop!” I assured her it didn’t have to stop.

“But it’s not true anymore!”

But it is. When something seems impossible in life, a magic-maker helps it come true. There’s great power in that.

The tooth fairy rearranges dollhouse furniture. In return, a six-year-old spends an hour making bedding and paintings and little clay gifts for her unseen friend. These are tiny acts of kindness. The child doesn’t realize it, but she’s begun her apprenticeship in real magic. Someday she’ll carry out greater acts for those in need.

As Marcus wrote:

“Humans were made to help others. And when we do help others — or help them do something — we’re doing what we were designed for. We perform our function.” (Meditations, Book 9:42.)

My daughter has since lost all her baby teeth but when I sometimes ask if we should “make some magic happen,” she knows exactly what it means — we’re going to do something kind and unexpected, something wonderful for someone. Centuries ago, a wise man draped in togas reminded himself daily:

“We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.”

Words to live by. And words to explain the Tooth Fairy by.