For a relationship of this kind to work, though, the student must be scrupulously honest with their mentor. In one passage, Marcus imagines a wise teacher instructing someone to think of nothing he would be unwilling to say aloud, uncensored, as soon as it comes into his mind. Marcus doubts that the majority of us could really endure this for even a single day because we foolishly put more value on other people’s opinions than on our own. And yet he aspired to this level of transparency. He says that we should imagine someone asking “What’s going on right now in your mind?” without warning and that we should be able to answer truthfully without feeling the need to blush. Marcus says he wants his soul to be naked and simple, more visible even than the body that surrounds it. Elsewhere he goes even further and, like a Cynic, says we should never crave anything in life that requires walls or curtains. On one hand, these are expressions of Marcus’s desire to work toward a lofty moral ideaclass="underline" being so pure of heart that he has nothing to hide from anyone. However, he’s also alluding to a very powerful therapeutic strategy. Being observed can help us develop greater self-awareness and correct our behavior, especially if we’re in the presence of someone we admire, such as a trusted mentor. Even in the absence of your own Rusticus, however, just imagining that you’re being observed by someone wise and benevolent can potentially have similar benefits, especially if you pretend that your innermost thoughts and feelings are somehow visible to them.15
If we wish to improve ourselves, Galen says that we must never relax our vigilance, not even for a single hour. How on earth do we do that? He explains that Zeno of Citium taught that “we should act carefully in all things—just as if we were going to answer for it to our teachers shortly thereafter.”16 That’s a rather clever mind trick that turns Stoic mentoring into a kind of mindfulness practice. Imagining that we’re being observed helps us to pay more attention to our own character and behavior. A Stoic-in-training, like the young Marcus, would have been advised always to exercise self-awareness by monitoring his own thoughts, actions, and feelings, perhaps as if his mentor, Rusticus, were continually observing him. Epictetus told his students that, just as someone who walks barefoot is cautious not to step on a nail or twist his ankle, they should be careful throughout the day not to harm their own character by lapsing into errors of moral judgment.17 In modern therapy, it’s common for clients who are making progress to wonder between sessions what their therapist might say about the thoughts they have. For example, they might be worrying about something and suddenly imagine the voice of their therapist challenging them with questions like “Where’s the evidence for those fears being true?” or “How’s worrying like this actually working out for you?” The very notion of someone else observing your thoughts and feelings can be enough to make you pause and consider them. Of course, if you occasionally talk to a mentor or therapist about your experiences, it’s much easier to imagine their presence when they’re not around. Even if you don’t have someone like this in your life, you can still envision that you’re being observed by a wise and supportive friend. If you read about Marcus Aurelius enough, for instance, you may experiment by imagining that he’s your companion as you perform some challenging task or face a difficult situation. How would you behave differently just knowing he was by your side? What do you think he might say about your behavior? If he could read your mind, how would he comment on your thoughts and feelings? You can pick your own mentor, of course, but you get the idea.
I think it’s possible that this is, in part, what Marcus was doing by writing The Meditations. Rusticus probably died around 170 AD, while Marcus was away commanding the legions on the northern frontier during the First Marcomannic War. There is some evidence to suggest he may have started work on The Meditations around the same time. It’s tempting then to wonder if he did so in response to the loss of his friend and tutor. As we’ve seen, Marcus described being surrounded by people who opposed his views and even wished him gone. It sounds as though he really felt the absence at this time of a friend like Rusticus who shared his philosophical beliefs and most cherished values.
If Marcus did start creating these notes for himself shortly after the loss of his Stoic mentor, his purpose may have been to assume responsibility for mentoring himself. Even today, writing exercises such as keeping a therapy journal are a popular form of self-help. However, in addition to aphorisms crafted by Marcus and sayings he quoted from famous poets and philosophers, The Meditations contains little snippets of dialogue. These could be quotations from lecture notes, such as the copy of Epictetus’s Discourses that Rusticus gave him. Or they could be fictional dialogues invented by Marcus, using his imagination to conjure up an inner mentor. Perhaps they were even fragments of remembered conversations Marcus may have had with his tutors many years earlier. For example, one of them can be paraphrased as follows:
TEACHER: Piece by piece, one action after another, you must build up your life and be content if each individual act, as far as Fate permits, achieves its goal.
STUDENT: But what if there is some external obstacle that prevents me from achieving my goal?
TEACHER: There can be no obstacle to a man’s efforts to approach things wisely, justly, and with self-awareness.
STUDENT: But what if some outward aspect of my behavior is hindered?
TEACHER: Well, then a cheerful acceptance of that hindrance is required, along with a tactful shift to doing what circumstances allow. This will enable you to substitute another course of action, one in keeping with the overall scheme of life that we’re talking about.18
Galen suggested that imitating a role model is more appropriate in our youth. Later in life, as we take more responsibility for our own character, it becomes important to follow specific philosophical principles and practice living by them. Over the years, with more experience, we should develop more self-awareness and become able to spot our own errors without needing the help of a mentor. Moreover, we gradually learn to weaken passions such as anger through disciplined practice and checking their expression at an early stage. Doing this frequently will eventually make us less prone to experiencing such feelings in the first place. Marcus had trained in philosophy for over three decades by the time Rusticus passed away. So as he began writing The Meditations, he was probably well prepared to enter the next phase in his psychological development as a Stoic. HOW TO FOLLOW YOUR VALUES
The term “mentor” comes from Homer’s Odyssey. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and virtue, disguises herself as a friend of Odysseus named Mentor so that she can counsel his son Telemachus, who is in grave danger. She remains by their side during the ultimate battle against Odysseus’s enemies, encouraging the hero toward victory. Marcus said that even aspiring Stoics should not be ashamed to seek the help of others, just as an injured soldier besieging a fortress does not blush to accept a leg up from his comrades in mounting the battlements.19 Not everyone has a Rusticus to get them over the ramparts, however. If you can find someone in whom you can trust, like Galen describes, that’s great. In truth, though, most people will probably have to rely on other modeling strategies, as Marcus perhaps did after the death of Rusticus. These fall into two main categories: writing and imagining.