Everybody has some unpleasant experiences in their lives.
People say things we don’t want to hear. People do things we
don’t want them to do. People don’t appreciate us, love us, praise
us. People go away when we want them to stay. People stay when
we would like them to go away. It happens to everyone. - Being Nobody Going Nowhere
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.
If then a god or a wise teacher should present himself to a man and bid him to think of nothing and to design nothing that he would not express as soon as he conceived it, he could not endure it even for a single day. So much more respect have we to what our neighbors shall think of us than to what we shall think of ourselves.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.4 (tr Long)
