Understanding what drives you is critical to understanding what controls or restricts you. It is also essential to your understanding of what you have control over.

Marcus Aurelius in the form of Meditations wrote of what he saw as truths. Much or all of his ideas of truth correspond to the state of nature, as he saw it, and the place of the rational mind within it. In his words, “no man will hinder thee from living according to the reason of thy own nature: nothing will happen to thee contrary to the reason of the universal nature.”

The passage is a reminder that you have control of who you are. Who you are is determined by your knowledge of self, who you want to be, and what you do. You will never have complete control of what happens to you, and therefore there is no reason to let concerns of what happens to you control you. What will happen will happen. The truth is, all you can do is keep moving toward your own self-actualization.