I’ve been dealing with chronic pain recently, and Meditations was recommended to me as an example of someone coping through finding a new way of thinking. At times it was a difficult book to read – you can really tell that Aurelius did not intend for this to be published widely – and some passages are of course far more applicable to statesmen in the ancient world than to the average modern person, but his outlook on life and its pitfalls is incredibly helpful. It’s amazing to think how little people have changed over so much time, and reassuring to relate this much to someone who lived with some of the same problems as me, and who died so many centuries before I was born.