Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
Marcus Aurelius isn't merely suggesting you ignore pain or pretend it didn't happen—he's making a subtler claim about the architecture of suffering itself. The injury as *fact* (the cut hand, the rejection letter) exists independent of your judgment, but the injury as *wound to your pride or sense of fairness* is entirely constructed by how you frame the event. When a colleague takes credit for your work, the professional setback is real; your feeling of being wronged is the additional story you tell yourself, and that story is what actually poisons your days. Strip away the narrative of being slighted, and you're left with a manageable problem rather than a personal betrayal.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason...”
Marcus Aurelius“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. I...”
Viktor Frankl“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca