Meditations

What Hacker News says

1. Curious_CakeAug 2026
   I read quite a lot as a kid. Fiction and non-fiction. I'm intensely curious, and the "why" and the "how" of things leads you into new subjects. It doesn't hurt that history is also filled with stories as compelling as most fiction. Much of the old stuff also holds up quite well. Meditations by Aurelius is amazing. Also, Confessions by Augustine of Hippo.

   I have many interests but botany became a big one, and the scientific naming scheme is mostly Latin and Greek, which leads to some interesting word history. "Sativa" means anything "cultivated" (example, "Avena sativa" is "cultivated oats" and "Crocus sativa" is "cultivated saffron"). "Nemo" means "no one" (so the "Search for Nemo" is the search for no one, haha), the root word for "service" means "slave". There are many more interesting associations.

   I find the deepest and most awe-inspiring truths within physics (out of which biology and chemistry are arguably sort of abstractions in terms of order of complexity). Behind this is a long awkward history of curious people fumbling for answers in the dark. I am an odd nut, but it is connecting in a comforting way the way I can see others have asked the same burning questions of the "how" and the "why" of things, and the myriad subjects it has lead them to.

   As John Muir once said: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

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2. gxsJun 2026
   If you like this I highly recommend you read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations if you haven’t

   An easy read that dives into stoicism, a similar mindset, within the context of running the Roman Empire.

   Great read.

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3. tim-tdayJun 2026
   AI has made me enjoy reading more. I enjoy the opportunity to sit on the couch and embrace the slower cadence of the writing. Ive been reading Sci Fi lately but I really enjoy the story in “Napoleon A Life” (history has been something my education lacked this one is a really compelling story)

   Might I suggest finding an author who you resonate with based on how the language is rings and not so much what the story tells. Poetry is good for this if you can get into it.

   Or books where you can read a little thing and think about it for hours. Meditations by Marcus Arailius is a good one. The Prophet by Kahil Gibran is another good one. Ficciones By Borjes is another. These are books where a little bite can set you thinking for an hour breaking you out of the frantic flow of modern life.

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4. sdsdMar 2025
   I love Meditations but everytime I think about Aurelius I laugh so hard thinking about this random Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoic/comments/1823mip/how_do_you_g...

   Here's the text:

   ## How do you get over the fact Marcus Aurelius wife cheated on him with a gladiator?

   I have been into stoicism for a while and have been using it to cope with life but learning this info has made me second guess the entire philosophy. Now whenever I try to be stoic I think about Marcus sitting in the corner writing meditations while his wife gets brutalized by a gigachad gladiator. Now whenever I think about stoicism it seems like a cuck philosophy. Was Marcus really the adam22 of his time? How can I get over this?

   ---

   Idk why this was the funniest thing to me, and now I just think of Marcus in the other room, hearing his wife getting ploughed, writing about how happiness doesn't depend on external circumstance so it's nbd

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5. philwelchMar 2025
   It’s always funny to read people’s hot takes about stoicism because they seem to polarize into two mutually exclusive camps. In one camp, stoicism is a “hollow, dissociative, nihilist philosophy” for sociopathic emperors and in the other, it’s just cope for people without the power or agency to change anything in the world around them. If anything the bipolar nature of this criticism itself validates the broad applicability of Stoicism.

   And actually it is an accident that Marcus Aurelius is the “premier famous stoic”, largely because, as you point out, his personal journal wasn’t actually burned as he requested. If you actually engage at even a marginally deeper level than social media slop—e.g. by taking an undergraduate survey course in ancient philosophy—you’ll learn that the premier Stoic was Epictetus, who was born into slavery.

   It’s also a glib misreading of Marcus Aurelius to characterize his writings as “bitter rants”. Much of “Meditations” takes the form of an internal dialogue between the emperor’s base feelings (which are sometimes bitter and sometimes as simple as not being a morning person) and his intellect as it works to apply Stoic philosophy to his own life. If you’re not an emperor you might not relate to having to deal with surly and ungrateful supplicants or the need to remind yourself that you aren’t actually a living god, and if you’re also a morning person, Marcus Aurelius is probably completely wasted on you. But that’s not what Marcus Aurelius is for. If you want a practical Stoic handbook, read the Enchiridion.

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6. BaeocystinNov 2024
   Seconding the Stoic recommendation. Meditations got me through a lot of rough patches.

   And I know exactly what you mean about First, Second, Third Career. I'd had my First before my parents got sick. Then 2008, divorce, house sale, parents (living 500 miles away) can no longer mask their rapidly-progressing Alzheimer's, all in the course of a few months. Second Career was definitely a shock to the system, balancing their care against my need to work and earn money to pay for it all. Hardest thing I've ever done. It has now been a few years since Third Career has started, and again, seismic shift in how I approach things. I am at peace with my choices, though. No regrets. I loved being able to take care of the people that loved me.

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