{"id":1593,"date":"2026-09-17T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T00:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2026-09-17T00:06:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T00:06:21","slug":"the-philosophy-i-am-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1593","title":{"rendered":"The Philosophy I Am Living"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What Marcus Aurelius helped me recognize and how to choose deliberately.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have always been drawn to philosophical thought and reasoning, not necessarily in an academic or formal way, but in the way philosophy poses the questions I have long been interested in: How should we live? What do we owe ourselves and one another? What makes a life good, meaningful, or well lived?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of my earliest exposure to that kind of thinking came from conversations with my husband\u2019s uncle, who held a PhD in philosophy, wrote several books, and taught deep thinkers at the Ivy League level. I remember being intrigued by how philosophical ideas could take something ordinary and turn it over until I saw it differently. Later, in graduate school, classes that touched on philosophy, ethics, human behavior, and reasoning always pulled me in. I liked questions without easy answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a recent reading of Marcus Aurelius has stirred something deeper within me. The more I have read and delved into Meditations<\/em> (instead of skimming for research), the more I have realized there is much more to unpack. His writing has felt less like discovering an entirely foreign philosophy and more like recognizing pieces of one I have been assembling, somewhat unconsciously, for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After years of soul-searching, I have begun asking myself a new question: What is my philosophy? I am drawn to Stoicism because I deeply believe in agency. I believe there is a difference between what happens to us and how we respond. Life is not fair, and people are not always able to meet us where we are. No amount of wishing can make another person more self-aware, more honest, more loving, or more emotionally available than they already are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have learned, sometimes painfully, that peace cannot depend on someone else becoming the person I need them to be. That is definitely the Stoic in me. The part that asks: What is mine to govern, and what to release? Where am I wasting energy trying to control what was never mine?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marcus Aurelius makes that question especially compelling because he was not writing from a life of ease. He was an emperor living through war, plague, political pressure, and personal loss, yet much of what he wrote privately was not about controlling others. It was about self-control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is something extraordinary about that. One of the most powerful men in the world repeatedly reminded himself not to become vain, reactive, bitter, or corrupted by power. His philosophy was not about getting the world to cooperate. It was about refusing to surrender his inner life to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That feels familiar to me, but Stoicism is not the whole story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can trace parts of my thinking even further back. Socrates speaks to the part of me that believes in the examined life…the need to question ourselves, our assumptions, our motives, and even the beliefs we hold most firmly. Plato speaks to my instinct that something deeper often lies beneath what is immediately visible, that surface behavior is not always the whole story, and that ideas such as goodness, justice, beauty, and truth matter beyond convenience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Aristotle brings it down to earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He believed character is not simply something we possess; it is something we practice. We become courageous by acting courageously, honest by telling the truth, and generous by being generous. In his view, virtue becomes a habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That resonates with me deeply. I believe we are always rehearsing ourselves. Every choice is a small vote for the person we are becoming, yet I am not purely Stoic because I do not want detachment from life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want immersion\u2026 beautiful meals, strange cities, long conversations, and laughter that makes you forget what time it is. I want friendship, intimacy, curiosity, beauty, wine, art, grief, memory, and surprise. I want to live for the texture of being alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is where I understand Epicureanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not the modern caricature of indulgence, but the deeper Epicurean belief that life is enriched by friendship, simple pleasures, freedom from needless fear, and knowing what is enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have never believed that a meaningful life must be grand. For me, it is a meal with ambiance, my husband\u2019s hand on my back. A conversation that goes one layer deeper than expected, or a place I may never see again. Just a simple, magical moment while wandering the world, awake enough to notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life is finite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no endless supply of living moments, and that awareness has become increasingly central to how I think about life. Beneath all these philosophies, something even more personal remains, which I cannot fully attribute to any one ancient thinker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe in emotional depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see something sacred in seeking to understand another person\u2019s interior world. I believe curiosity is a form of love. I believe being known matters. I believe some of the most important experiences of a life unfold in conversations no one else ever hears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet this is also where life becomes difficult for me. Depth is not evenly distributed. Some people do not want to examine themselves. Some cannot tolerate vulnerability or ambiguity. Some prefer logistics, distraction, fixing, surface-level conversation, and constant movement. I used to think that if I explained myself more clearly, offered one more opening, or translated what I was feeling once more, perhaps the connection would deepen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am learning that it often does not, and that is where Stoicism comes back in. As hard as I have tried, manufacturing emotional reciprocity is impossible and exhausting. I cannot teach someone to be curious about my inner life. Nor can I force depth into a relationship that lacks the bandwidth for it, but I can choose where to place mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps that is the philosophy I am arriving at now: feel deeply, but do not chase understanding. Love fully, but do not confuse love with control. Tell the truth, but do not demand that everyone be able to receive it. Practice courage, generosity, and self-awareness until they become part of character. Notice pleasure as it happens, and remember daily that life is finite. Lastly, when something is outside my control, release it before it consumes the energy meant for living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not want the Stoic life if it means feeling less, but the Stoic strength to survive feeling more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want Epicurean wisdom to recognize what is already enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want the Aristotelian discipline to continue helping me become the person I say I want to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want the Socratic courage to keep questioning myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I want the Platonic instinct to keep looking beneath the surface to discover what is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe my philosophy is not about choosing one school of thought but about taking what has endured for thousands of years and asking what still feels true in my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My goal is to live with eyes wide open and choose deliberately. To feel without sinking into someone else’s quicksand. To care without absorbing negative energy, while knowing when something belongs to me and when it does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And above all, to remember that a life is not measured only by what happened in it, but by how fully I was present while it was happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Marcus Aurelius helped me recognize and how to choose deliberately. I have always been drawn to philosophical thought and reasoning, not necessarily in an academic or formal way, but in the way philosophy poses the questions I have long been interested in: How should we live? What do we owe ourselves and one another? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,48,43,29,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critical-thinking","category-growth","category-living-the-question","category-personal-contemplation","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1597,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}