Dusty Wentworth

I recently finished reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Not a treatise. Not a performance. Just a man—one of great station, yes—writing to himself with unflinching honesty. No audience. No applause. Just truth. What struck me wasn’t simply the wisdom, though it was there in abundance. It was the quiet discipline of reflection. A man who held the Roman Empire in his hand, yet chose to measure himself not by power, but by principle. He wrote of life and death as natural equals. Of time, fleeting and precious. Of ambition as a poor substitute for virtue. And of the great delusion that we have more time than we do. In his world, nature was teacher and companion—not something to be conquered, but to be aligned with. And I ask myself: what would he make of our world today? We fill our minds with noise. We worship distraction and call it connection. We chase wealth, appearance, and outrage—often with no sense of where we’re going, or why. The modern world is clever, but is it ...