Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

I read this book today by the self proclaimed philosopher king Marcus Aurelius. He tried to emulate the platonic ideal that a leader should also be a philosopher. The meditations were wrote whilst he was preparing for military campaigns and were very much for self reflection and meditation and were not intended to be published. Thus, like St Augustnes Confessions, you end up with a very confessional set of reflections. I found them interesting but not particularly ground breaking. I think the greatest theme that I got from it was how the world is in a state of mutability and the role that change plays. Aurelius points out that change is what allows us to do everything, if we did not change from one state to another from inaction to action then the world would fall apart. Change is the blood of existence. I think this is an nice concept.