Meditations 4.31 · 4.31

Marcus counsels a settled contentment with one’s vocation. τεχνίον is a diminutive — "the little craft," a modest, almost humble word — and there is real feeling in the instruction to love it and προσαναπαύεσθαι, to "lean back and rest" in it, as one rests against something trustworthy. Whatever art a person has genuinely learned and made his own is enough to give the mind a home; restlessness comes from despising one’s actual work and coveting another’s.

The rest of life is then to be lived under two commitments. Toward the gods: having "entrusted all one’s own things" to them ἐξ ὅλης τῆς ψυχῆς, from the whole soul — the posture of complete trust in providence, releasing one’s grip on outcomes. Toward other people: making oneself μήτε τύραννον μήτε δοῦλον, neither tyrant nor slave. The pairing is exact and characteristically balanced. To domineer over others and to cringe before them are the two failures of a free man’s relation to his fellows, and both spring from caring too much about externals — power in the one case, others’ favour or threats in the other. The one who has already handed everything to the gods needs neither to master men nor to serve them; he is free of both because he is attached to neither.

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