Outside The Box

Marcus Aurelius encourages us to “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.”

I read that in Meditations, inscribed on an ancient device that displays information via ink printed on paper. It has no backlight or brightness control, so it requires external illumination even as it attempts to illuminate internally

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Elsewhere in Meditations, he writes, “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”

Curious about what other writings by Marcus Aurelius might be available, I decided to risk exposure to the internet and search for more of his works. I say “risk” because the internet today not only colors our thoughts—it stains them.

I vaguely remembered seeing something on Facebook referencing Aurelius, so I decided to go back in and find it. It was a long shot. Locating something a second time on Facebook is like finding that 10mm socket that falls behind the radiator.

I disdain squinting at my phone, hunched over and poking at it for any length of time, so I set out to log in to Facebook on my laptop. That takes a minute. There are so many passwords now, and as hackers have become more sophisticated, passwords have grown in length and are often accompanied by third‑party verifications and the infamous CAPTCHA. Ever wonder what that stands for? “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

I have a good memory, but it’s not eidetic. I don’t attempt to memorize thirty different passwords of sixteen characters each, so like many of us, I use a password manager. Password managers are great—until you have to log in to them. The Master Password is usually sufficient, but occasionally, after a software update causes the application to lose its mind, the account password is needed as well.

So here we go. To enter the password necessary to log in to the password manager, I need the string of characters taped to the door inside the safe. The safe combination isn’t a problem. I still remember my locker combination from high school. But I’m ten minutes into my attempt to get back into Facebook, and the returns are diminishing rapidly.

Safe opened. Account password retrieved. Password entered. Logged in to the password manager. Master Password entered. “We don’t recognize the device you’re using…” The color of my thoughts begins to darken.

The password manager wants to send me a text to verify that I’m me. I appreciate the vigilance guarding the keys to my pixel kingdom, but the text never arrives. That’s a problem sometimes when you live in the boondocks and depend on Wi‑Fi calling. If your carrier doesn’t support the exact SMS type over Wi‑Fi, the text will wait for a cell tower to wander by.

“Try another way,” the application suggests. It offers to send an email with the secret code proving that I’m really me. This particular message goes to a Gmail account, which darkens my thoughts further. Google now, by default, allows its Gemini AI features to read and analyze the contents of your Gmail, Drive, and Chat unless you dig into the settings and disable those options—in three different places.

We’re at the threshold now. Facebook has accepted the secret code accompanying my username and password. The final hurdle is the CAPTCHA. “Select all the images containing bicycles.” I don’t see any bicycles. “Select all images containing traffic lights.” Still not enough. “Select all images containing stairs.” I must have missed a corner. “Select all images containing mosquitoes.” I pause to wonder why Facebook takes such pains to protect me from myself and my robots, but does little to filter out links to compromised websites, phishing ads and fake stories generated by artificial intelligence.

I never found the Facebook reference, but I did discover that, aside from a few fragments, Meditations is the only surviving authentic work by Marcus Aurelius. Everything else is fake—or AI‑generated fake.

By the time I stepped through Facebook’s gates—only to find nothing—I had already spent more effort than Marcus Aurelius ever invested in accessing his own thoughts. He needed only a moment of stillness; I needed a safe, a password manager, a verification code that wandered the backroads in search of a cell tower, and a series of puzzles about bicycles and traffic lights. And yet, somewhere in that absurd gauntlet, the lesson became clearer than anything I might have found on Facebook. Aurelius wrote, “Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.” After today’s ordeal, I’m inclined to believe him. Color my thoughts with the quiet page, the dim lamp, and the ancient voice asking nothing of me but attention.