261111 What I learned in my studies this morning 6

Today's Meditation:

Meditations (trans. Hicks and Hicks), 7.24

I gotta admit, this one has me at a loss: I get the first part. I get the second part. I just see no connection between the two.

I have 5 or 6 translations of the Meditations (because I like to compare how differently scholars can present the text). All of them show this passage as a singular whole.

Conversely, several online sources seem to indicate that there is lacuna in the text after restored. That the text here might be incomplete or missing something.

This makes sense to me.

The few discussions of this verse I could find tied themselves in knots attempting to explain it as a whole.

Rather, I think it makes more sense to assume some missing text shows that either the two parts don't go together at all or there's a piece which explains the seeming non sequitur absent from our versions.

It boils down to 'don't be grumpy and scornful so much that it makes me that way permanently.'

And 'if I cannot separate right from wrong, it would rob me of my chances to be virtuous, leaving me without a shot at equanimity and satisfaction.

If I'm forever denied such a life, even as a distant hope, what point remains to life?