When the other projects his chaos

When someone criticizes you, insults you, or rejects you, what’s really happening? Nothing more than a reflection of their own inner world. Their words are just an echo of their fears, frustrations, and unfulfilled desires.

I’ve shared this idea with you many times before, but what I especially appreciate in the words of Marcus Aurelius that follow is the way he calls on himself to remain kind. It’s a reminder he gives himself—to look beyond the words, to peer into people’s souls, to observe their nature—and there, he often finds neither wisdom nor true self-awareness, but simply the reverberation of their own inner struggles. And he asks, while offering the answer: why worry about the opinion of someone who barely understands their own being?

“When another blames or hates you or men express such sentiments, go to their inward selves, pass in and see what kind of men they are. You will see that you ought not to torment yourself in order that they may hold some opinion about you.
You must, however, be well disposed to them; for in the natural order they are friends, and moreover the gods help them in a variety of ways, by dreams, by prophecy;—to get, however, the objects about which they are concerned..” ¹

This is what Marcus Aurelius invites us to do: not to absorb the anger of others as if it were our own, but to see it for what it is, a projection of their own inner turmoil. This idea resonates deeply with modern research on attribution bias ². When someone acts with hostility, there’s a good chance they’re not reacting to you, but to their own insecurities. Carl Jung called this the shadow ³—the hidden part of ourselves we project onto others because we can’t face it within us. When someone despises you, it may simply be a part of themselves they refuse to confront.

And here’s where Marcus Aurelius’ wisdom reveals its full strength: despite everything,
we must continue to love.
Not with a naive or submissive kind of love,
but with clear-eyed kindness,
entering into a form of emotional self-regulation,
by reinterpreting the situation for ourselves:
you no longer see the other’s behavior as hostility directed at you, but as a weakness they are suffering from, a pain they can’t manage, and that expresses itself through aggression.

That said, one word of caution to end with: this doesn’t mean passively accepting everything. Stoicism is not a philosophy of submission, but of mastery. What matters is not letting others dictate your inner state.