The Emperor Who Expected to Be Wrong
Marcus Aurelius kept a private journal he never intended anyone to read. In it, he reminded himself, repeatedly, that people would criticise him, obstruct him, and misunderstand him, and that none of this was a reason to stop working. The Meditations, Book 2, opens with exactly this: he tells himself to expect the difficult, the ungrateful, the deceitful, at the start of every single day. This was not pessimism. It was preparation.
