July 27, 2026

The People You'll Meet Today

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.

Marcus Aurelius wrote this in Book 2 of his private journal, likely while leading Roman legions along the Danube frontier, far from the comforts of Rome. He was not writing for readers, he was reminding himself, before the demands of another day as emperor, that the people he would meet were flawed and would act accordingly. The passage names the trouble outright: meddling, ingratitude, arrogance, dishonesty, jealousy, and surliness are what to expect rather than what should shock him. This is premeditatio malorum in its purest form, rehearsing the day's likely friction before stepping into it, so irritation never catches him off guard. Stoics practiced this each morning, picturing the rude comment, the unfair delay, the broken plan, so that when it came, it arrived as something already prepared for rather than something that could unsettle them.

A principle of Stoicism: Premeditatio Malorum →