I started reading Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” yesterday in my fevered haze.  It scratches a very annoying itch that I’ve had for so long, I forgot I had it.  You know you were overdue to be kicked in the mind when it happens and it feels really good.

One of Uncle Marcus’s tenants would serve so many of the professionally offended members of our society (which seems to be the majority of The Herd on most days) extremely well: “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed.  Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.”  The power over your own mind cannot be stolen.  If you know Who You Are and believe in What You Do, then external feedback will not affect you at all.  I’ve been saying this shit for years, as you know, dear reader, but I’m hoping that by pointing out that Marcus Aurelius concurs, perhaps some of the more noisy irritants in our society might shuteth the fuck up.  Here is the ultimately question that Uncle Marcus and I get to very quickly in our similar rationales when dealing with others: if someone says something that may be considered by other, lesser people to be “insulting” (or “offensive” or “insensitive” or “hurtful,” but you are not insulted by it, can it be considered an insult in the first place?  Of course not.  The only power anyone has over you to insult you, offend you, hurt your feelings, or make you cry is the power that you willingly give them.

N.P.: “In Two” – Nine Inch Nails