Handling Insults
This week you will work with one of the most personal provocations a person faces: the insult, the sneer, the contempt of another. The seven passages move you through a precise progression, from learning to notice your own reaction, to understanding the insulter, to arriving at a place where others' contempt simply loses its grip. Each day builds on the last, so stay with the sequence.
Passage
Will any man despise me? Let him see to it. But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that deserves to be despised. Will he hate me? Let him see to it. But I will be kind and well-disposed to every man and ready to show him what is overlooked, not reproachfully nor as though I were displaying forbearance, but genuinely and generously.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XI.13
Reflection
Marcus makes a clean division of labour here. Whether someone despises you is their business; what you actually do and say is yours. He does not ask you to be indifferent to the despiser in a cold way. He says he will be kind, well-disposed, genuinely and generously helpful, and explicitly not in a way that performs forbearance or signals how noble he is being. That word 'reproachfully' is key. Many of us, when we decide to 'rise above' an insult, still manage to communicate how much rising above we are doing. Marcus is asking for the real thing: virtue that is not keeping score.
Go deeper
Think of a time when you responded to someone's contempt or unkindness with what looked like generosity but was actually, at least partly, a way of making them feel your forbearance. What would the genuinely generous version of that response have looked like?
Practice
Let Him See to It
Today, if anyone is dismissive or unkind toward you, practise responding only within your own domain. You do not control their behaviour; you control yours. Before you respond, ask: 'Am I about to do something that deserves contempt?' If not, respond warmly and move on without tracking whether they noticed your warmth. At the end of the day, write one sentence about how it felt to genuinely let their side of it be their business.