Originally published September 3, 2013. From Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

Whenever in the morning you rise unwillingly, let this thought be with you: “I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if am about to do the things for which I was brought into the world? Or was I made to lie under the bedclothes and keep myself warm?”

“But that is more pleasant,” you say.

Do you live then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action and exertion? Do you not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working together to set in order their several parts of the universe? And are you unwilling to do the work of a human being, not eager to do what belongs to your nature?

“But I must have rest also.”

You must; nature, however, has fixed bounds to this. She has fixed bounds too to both eating and drinking, yet you go beyond those bounds, beyond what is enough; yet in your work it is not so, and you stop short of what you can do. So you love not yourself, for if you did, you would love your nature and her will.

Those who love their own trades exhaust themselves in working at them, unwashed and without food; but you value your own nature less than the carpenter values his craft, or the dancer his dancing art, or the lover of money his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory. Such men, when they have a strong love for a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep until they perfect the thing they care for.

But is service to society less valuable in your eyes and less worthy of your labor?