A wooden gavel lies on a hand mirror surrounded by grey paper shapes.

Original artwork, not a still

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Harm, on this view, depends on our judgment of what happened. Remove the opinion that one has been wronged and the complaint disappears; without the complaint, the injury itself vanishes. The passage locates hurt in interpretation and offers control over it by changing how one judges events.

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