Switch Off Your RACING Mind In 7 Stoic Steps And SLEEP Again

Marcus Aurelius wasn't born to be emperor.

He was born in Rome into a wealthy and well-connected family in the year 121.

His father died when he was small, and he was brought up by his mother and his grandfather.

He was a serious, studious child, far too responsible for his age.

The Emperor Hadrian, who knew him as a boy, gave him an affectionate nickname, a play on his family name, Verissimus, the most sincere, the most truthful.

And then Hadrian made a decision that changed his life.

To secure the succession, he adopted a senator called Antoninus on one condition, that Antoninus in turn adopt young Marcus.

He was 16.

Overnight, that quiet lad became the future emperor of the known world.

An ancient biography tells us that when he heard the news, he wasn't pleased.

He was distressed.

He left his mother's house for the palace with a heavy heart, like someone stepping into a cage.

And it's said that when those close to him asked why he was so downcast, he spoke of the evils that power brings with it.

He was 16, and he already knew what lay in store for him.

For more than 20 years, Marcus prepared himself in the shadow of Antoninus.

He had the finest teachers of his day.

One of them, Fronto, taught him rhetoric, and many of the letters they exchanged have survived.

In them, we meet an affectionate young man, sometimes ill, sometimes overwhelmed by his studies, telling his teacher how he spends his days.

He isn't yet the sage of the Meditations.

He's a young man trying to live up to what's expected of him.

In one of those letters, young Marcus describes to Fronto a whole day in the country.

He got up, read for a while, took some exercise, helped with the grape harvest, ate a simple meal, and chatted with his mother as she sat on her bed.

It's an almost insignificant letter, and that's exactly what makes it so precious.

It shows us someone who, before he had to carry the world, knew how to enjoy an ordinary day.

Years later, in the middle of war, that love of a simple life would be one of the ideas he returned to again and again in his notebook.