The latest from Work Matters
| Roman emperor and Stock philosopher teaches lessons about control |
| I am interested in what lawyers can learn from the classics. I am also interested in how to deal effectively with dysfunctional lawyers . And when I say dysfunctional, I mean the type with whom you can't reason, for whom a threat of sanctions by a judge means zero, and who delight in causing an uproar, not quelling one. So I was struck one recent snow day by a passage from the Mediations by Roman emperor and Stoic philsopher Marcus Aurelius. His big insight is that you can't control what another does, but you are in total and complete control of how you react to it. Here is a quote from Book VIII, 47-49 : "If you suffer pain because of some external cause, what troubles you is not the thing but your decision about it, and this it is in your power to wipe out at once . . . abide always by the first impressions and add nothing of your own from within, and that's an end of it. . . ." It is not within a person's power to change what a person says or does, but it is within his power to determine how he reacts to it. This is an especially useful insight in dealing with the dysfunctional, because they want a reaction; it fuels their dysfunction like warm water fuels a hurricane. Aurelius anticipated the next question, which is more of a lament: Why can't we all just get along? Here he is in Book 8, passage 50 :"The cucumber is bitter? Put it down. There are brambles in the path? Step to one side. That is enough, without also asking 'Why did these things come into the world at all ?' Because the student of Nature will ridicule the question, exactly as a carpenter or cobbler would laugh at you if you found fault because you see shavings and clippings from their work in their shops." That's the way it is, so suck it up, as Aurelius would counsel. Want to read Aurelius? A traditional translation is by A.S.L. Farquharson published by Everyman's Library. A more modern translation is from Gregory Hays, published by The Modern Library. Both have excellent introductions. |
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