It was an awful period of Roman history. A fifteen year plague that killed millions. Political corruption and deceit. Historic floods. Tragic wars on distant frontiers. Marcus Aurelius experienced all the disasters that could befall a leader, smack dab in the middle of a period we now see as the beginning of the decline and fall of the whole empire.

Yet amidst this, Marcus was not only as good and decent as a leader has ever been, but he produced Meditations, one of the most beautiful and enduring works of philosophy ever written (here’s our leatherbound edition worthy of his poetry). It calls to mind a quote that the author Erik Larson built his most recent Churchill/WWII book around (a must read you can grab from The Painted Porch). “Never was there such a contrast,” John Colville said of the events of 1940, “of natural splendor and human vileness.”

So it was for the modern world recently. There’s been a deadly pandemic, an attempted coup, and all sorts of other awfulness. There were also heroic doctors, pioneering scientists (who saved millions of lives), there was beautiful art and side-splittingly funny comedy. In your own home, amidst the ugliness around you, there may have been new babies born, new businesses started, new relationships blossoming, positive new habits begun.

We don’t control the vileness of the world or of other people. We do control whether we contribute to it though, whether we choose to contrast it with our own splendor and goodness. We control what we look for also–as Marcus did, filling Meditations not just with somber or depressing notes but also observations about the beauty and majesty of nature and life. Will you be splendid or vile? That’s the call you get to make, always and forever.