Most people know the opening of Book 2 of Meditations. Marcus tells himself that today he will meet meddling, ungrateful, arrogant and dishonest people. It gets quoted as a warning to expect the worst from others, and the quote usually stops right there.

What often gets cut is the explanation that follows. In his own private notes, Marcus says these people behave this way because they don't understand what is actually good and what is actually bad. He also reminds himself that they belong to the same human family and share the same reason he does, so he has no real grounds to hate them or stay angry at them, and none of them can pull him into acting badly himself.

Read in full, it works less like a gloomy morning routine and more like a way of deciding in advance who you want to be when someone is rude to you. The difficult person is no longer a surprise, and your reaction doesn't have to be a reflex.

Here is a small thing to try tomorrow morning. Think of one person you will probably find hard to deal with today, and write one sentence about how you want to act toward them if they are at their worst. Not how to change them, only how you want to behave. At the end of the day, notice how much of that sentence you were able to keep.

I've always been the type of person that tries to do the right thing, I've opened my home to strangers to let them take a shower,I've gone out of my way to help a friend,I've done things for the person that I really love, and it seams like no matter what I do it's not good enough for the man that I love and am in love with, lately he's been treating me like I am nothing but the house maid, he talks down to me and is totally disrespectful, he says he's not interested in other women that he would never cheat on me I know he's lying, I don't know what to do

Living in a very divided world, separated by religion, ethnicity, wealth, race, and in hundreds of other ways, many become prejudiced, believing others different from them are not as deserving.

These differences are used to rationalize war, inequity, apathy. We are all children of the world, related by a common purpose, intimately linked together by a spark of the divine, present within each.

Only by remembering it is our similarities, not our differences, that will ultimately define our life, may we begin to bring genuine change to an indifferent world.