/lit/ - Literature

This book didn't so much change my life, but confirmed the principles which I grasped for. For years I wished there was a magical book which acted as a manual to not just get through life, but to life a happy one, which brings me to:

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

Some info: The book was never intended to be read. Marcus Aurelius, known as the last, and arguably the best Emperor of Rome. This man had the weight of an empire on his shoulders, scores of enemies, plagues, famine, back-stabbers. This man could have been a tyrant (like his son, Commodus), but he wasn't. He lived a virtuous life and saw being the Emperor as his duty.

This great man wrote a book to himself in secret which holds the poetically written virtues of a man living as a philosopher and a Stoic. I argue that no greater man has ever lived.

So you might want to give it a try. For further reading read 'The Obstacle is the Way' by Ryan Holiday, which interprets the Meditations into something better put into action.

Any fellow Stoics on lit?

I've been 'practising' stoicism for about a year now since I first read The Meditations. It didn't so much change the way I saw the world, but confirmed it, pulling my thoughts into focus in a definitive way of being.

Because of Stoicism I'm happier than I've ever been.