There’s nothing wrong with success. There’s nothing wrong with power. There’s nothing wrong with living a nice life, with achievement or admiration.
Certainly many Stoics did precisely that. Seneca. Cato. Marcus Aurelius. They were important and well-known. They were admired. They were influential. But you know what? They should have shrugged all that off. They appreciate the success, but it wasn’t something they coveted. It may have impressed others, but it wasn’t how they defined themselves.
“The main thing, Binx,” Walter Wade says after receiving the most significant social honor in New Orleans in Walker Percy’s Stoicism-adjacent novel, The Moviegoer, “is to be humble, to make Golden Fleece and be humble about it.” It might have meant a lot to others, he was saying, but it didn’t mean anything to him.
That’s how we might assume Marcus Aurelius felt about a lot of what was thrown at him. In fact, one of the lines in Meditations (get the "How to Read Meditations" digital guide FREE when you purchase a leatherbound copy of Meditations this month only!) suggests as much, where he says he measures himself not by how many honors he’s received, but by how many he’s turned down. He didn’t make “Golden Fleece,” but did remind himself that the purple cloak of the emperor was nothing more than an ordinary one “dyed with shellfish blood.” Clearly, he still tried. Clearly, he was still active in the world. He just measured himself by his humility, by his indifference, more than he did by his achievement or status.
So must we. We can still try to climb the ladder of success. We can be powerful. We can live a nice life. The main thing is though, if you do this, be humble even so—humble even if you have achieved an impressive amount, even if you have done many impressive things.
P.S. April is Meditations Month here at Daily Stoic! This month only, get the How To Read Meditations (A Daily Stoic Digital Guide) for FREE when you buy our premium leatherbound edition of Meditations, unlocking access to the private community for Meditations discussion and an invitation to a LIVE Q&A call with Ryan Holiday when you purchase before April 26th. This is a rare opportunity to ask him your questions and go deep into the text that’s shaped his life more than any other—don't miss it!