“Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. I cannot be harmed by any of them.”

We can choose the way we live. Meditations, by stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius is a journal of observations and life instructions to himself that pierces through theoretical philosophical discourse into the heart of what philosophy can offer us: a different way of life. The choice of a way of life is open to all people- it is a real option that can enrich and inform our everyday experience of the world and of ourselves. This is the perspective we call wisdom- for Aurelius, philosophy is merely a preparatory exercise for wisdom. Gathering together around Meditations will allow us to apply Stoic philosophy to the dilemmas we face in life, and therby transform his philosophy into something resembling a wisdom of the everyday.