Member-only story
Your Personal Journal Gets Published to the World
How would you feel if the entirety of your personal journal was made public to the world without your consent?
I know I would feel rather embarrassed.
What if instead, those private self-reflections and entries were published posthumous to your lifetime? What if you weren’t there to protest the dissemination of your private thoughts?
“Meditations”
In the 170s, Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus led a series of military campaigns against Germanic tribes along the Danube River, around present-day Austria and Hungary. During his campaigns, he crafted a series of personal writings. The work ranged from succinct quotes to long, abstract paragraphs.
These writings are what we know today as Meditations, the perennial bestseller consisting of twelve books detailing Marcus Aurelius’ personal life and Stoic philosophy.
Marcus did not, however, title his work “Meditations.”
It was more likely that Marcus did not afford any title for his writing, as he never viewed his work as a discrete entity, let alone something to be published.
