260109 What I learned in my studies this morning 6

Today's Meditation(s):

Meditations, 4.18 (Hicks and Hicks)

Worry about myself, not others. It is enough — more than enough, too much! — to work on following reason and Nature in my internal world. 

Worrying about someone else's actions is useless — more than useless, detrimental! — and wastes my energy, focus, and care.

Not only are their lives beyond my control, they're not my business in the first place.

I can be concerned for a friend, or worried about a child, and do it in a way which doesn't presume that they are mine to rule and then be frustrated when they fail to become my willing servants.

It's the assumption of right which is wrong. I have not only no ability to direct them to my wishes, but I deserve no such thing even were it possible. They are independent moral agents and not objects to manipulate. 

Kant was right: treat people as ends in themselves, not as means.