Reading is hard

I spend a bit of time each day reading The Meditations, not reading in depth or for any great reason, but just finding a random bit and reading it.  When I do that I use an old translation by George Long, replete with thee's and thy's and didst's.  There's nothing about past speech which makes it in any way "better" than modern speech, and there are arguments to be made that putting classical texts into modern English, or even vernacular, open them up to far greater audiences, but there's something about the movement and the flow of older English that really draws me in.  Seeing text in different formats definitely leads us to think differently about it, even when it is based around giving the exact same set of information.  What would some of those differences look like?

Never too far off, vol2, part 2a, the one where Marcus Aurelius ACTUALLY responds to Hamlet

So, Hamlet has his litany of complaints.  Let's boil them down into a really compressed form:

Is it better to deal with all of the bullshit in life, or to just kill yourself.  It's definitely a better idea to kill yourself, but what if killing yourself sends you straight to Hell?  Going to Hell for all of eternity would definitely be worse than dealing with this crappy life for another fifty or sixty years, so, out of my own cowardice, I'll choose to stay alive in this world rather than risk eternal torment in the next.

Let's look at where all this torment of Hamlet's comes from, and how much of our life is actually the torment that Hamlet said that it is.  After that we should try to ascertain whether dying would actually be better than putting up with life.

Never too far off, vol2, part 1, the one where Marcus Aurelius responds to Hamlet

I've always thought that Hamlet was one of the most annoying characters in all of Shakespeare. How would Marcus Aurelius respond to some petty princeling beating himself over the head over whether he should commit suicide or continue living his "miserable" life? 

Never too far off, volume 1

There are no good ways to start this blog post off.  There aren't many interesting ways to talk about death, but we face it every day.  Thankfully most of us deal with it through the media, and not as a daily occurrence in our own lives.  It's far away even though it's always buzzing about in our ears.  It might be far, but there it is all the same.  There's no getting around it; from dust we came, and to the dust we shall return.

The guy on the left.

Sometimes it's best to look to first sources.  Other times someone has gathered up all those sources and put them together in a way that can save you a great deal of time.  If you were interested in reading Epictetus, I would probably tell you to pick up The Art of Living, a modern interpretation of his works, as it does as good a job of any in really dealing with the gist of his work.  No one jumps right into a marathon.  If you were to say to me, "Hey Cam, everything sucks, I want to go occupy some street somewhere in the cold, driving rain," I'd have to reply, "Don't waste your time and get sick and risk being convinced that dreadlocks are a good idea, just read some Marcus Aurelius."

Oh yeah, the guy from Gladiator!