What Marcus Aurelius Taught Me About Handling Failure

January 18, 2024|1 min read

There's a line in Meditations that stopped me: "You have power over your mind not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

I was debugging a critical production issue at 2 AM when I read this. The frustration melted. Not because the bug disappeared, but because I realized my stress wasn't about the bug. It was about my resistance to the situation.

Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor with absolute power, still worried about things outside his control. But he chose to focus on what he could control his response, his effort, his character.

For engineers, this hits different. We build systems to control chaos, but we can't control

Users' internet connections
Server failures
Browser quirks
Time zone bugs

Stoicism isn't about not caring. It's about caring strategically. Throw everything at the problem you can actually influence. Then accept what you can't.

That production bug? It taught me to separate the technical problem (solvable) from my emotional reaction (optional).