Collections by Hamza Khan

Natural purpose of humans is to work with others

• “Whenever you have trouble getting up in the morning, remind yourself that you’ve been made by nature for the purpose of working with others, whereas even unthinking animals share sleeping. And it’s our own natural purpose that is more fitting and more satisfying.”—MARCUS AURELIUS, M EDITATIONS, 8.12

• If a dog spends all day in bed—your bed, most likely—that’s fine. It’s just being a dog. It doesn’t have anywhere to be, no other obligation other than being itself. According to the Stoics, we humans have a higher obligation—not to the gods but to each other. What gets us out of bed each morning—even when we fight it like Marcus did—is praxeis koinonikas apodidonai (to render works held in common). Civilization and country are great projects we build together and have been building together with our ancestors for millennia. We are made for cooperation (synergia) with each other.

• Daily stoic

The purpose of life is to be happy

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Marcus Aurelius

Purpose is what gets you out of bed each morning

• Marcus Aurelius believed that we each have a purpose; something we were created for. It is our duty to carry out that purpose. Here’s a quote that reflects this:

• “Everything, a horse, a vine, is created for some duty. For what task, then, were you yourself created? A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.”

• In addition, Marcus Aurelius believed that your purpose is what gets you out of bed each morning. Here’s Marcus Aurelius:
• • “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work–as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for–the things which I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’
  • –But it’s nicer here…
  • So you were born to feel ‘nice?’ Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
  • –But we have to sleep sometime…
  • Agreed. But nature set a limit on that–as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota. You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?“

Bad actions are actually result of ignorance

• Unhappiness and evil are the result of ignorance. Thus, if someone is unkind– or acts boorishly– it’s because they’re not thinking clearly. Here’s a passage from “Meditations” that makes this point:
• “. . . Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore, none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.’” Marcus Aurelius

You have two essential tasks in life: to be a good person and to pursue the occupation that you love.

When God has a plan for you, it doesn’t matter who stays against it

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