Now here is something interesting and something insightful.
Don’t let fame and fortune become an obstacle to unlock who you really are. You can try to find who you are by practicing the stoic virtues.
Marcus describes the virtues as being fairness, self-control, courage, and free will. Modern day labeling would name these as justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom respectively. I’ll map them out.
Fairness is to justice. It makes sense. Something that is justice will have to be fair. It may mean to make certain sacrifices for the collective good.
Self-control is to temperance. This also makes sense. If I am going to control impulses then I am also going to be temperate. I will easily maintain my attitude.
Courage to courage. The odds of a situation may be for you or against you. If the odds are against you, more courage is required.
Last, free-will is to wisdom. This is what I found most interesting. As I understood free-will before reading this passage from Marcus, free-will is the ability to choose your own life. But there is so much more to that! If I am going to choose my own life, I must, by necessity of fate, learn what doesn’t go well. And if I learn something from bad moments, then I might learn what to do differently. I gain wisdom by learning what to do differently.
These are the virtues of a Stoic. They are important to live by. I wonder if they cover all aspects of live. Even then, they do seem sufficient to help in most situations.