Ryan Holiday

We fought hard over nothing, he sings.

We fought till nothing remained, and I carried that nothing for a long time.

Doesn't that just perfectly capture, in such a sad and telling way, many of our relationships and grudges?

We turn nothing into something and then hold on to it like it's everything.

Then we wonder why we're unhappy.

We wonder why we're lonely.

We wonder where people we used to love have gone.

We wonder where the good times went.

The answer, we drove them away.

We ground them into dust.

Marcus Aurelius struggled with this too.

Had a problem like we all do with anger and taking offense and getting into arguments and needing to prove people wrong.

If he hadn't, he never would have written this little reminder in meditations.

Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something.

The most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever.

Where is all that now?

Smoke, dust, legend, or not even legend.

Think of all the examples and how trivial the things we want so passionately are.

It's heartbreaking.

It's true.