Whenever a person’s lack of shame offends you, you should immediately ask yourself: “So is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?” It isn’t, and you should therefore stop demanding the impossible. He’s just one of those shameless people who must necessarily exist in the world. You should keep the same thought readily available also for when you’re faced with devious and untrustworthy people, and people who are flawed in any way. As soon as you remind yourself that it’s impossible for such people not to exist, you’ll be kinder toward each and every one of them. It’s also helpful immediately to consider what virtue nature has granted us human beings to deal with any offense—gentleness, for instance, to counter discourteous people, and other ways to counter others. Generally speaking, you can get someone who’s gone astray to mend his ways—and whatever his wrong, a wrongdoer is missing his mark and has gone astray. Besides, have you been harmed in any way? You’ll find that none of the people who make you lose your temper has done anything that might affect your mind for the worse; and outside of the mind there’s nothing that is truly detrimental or harmful for you. Moreover, what is unusual or surprising about an uneducated man doing uneducated things? It’s worth considering whether you ought rather to blame yourself for failing to foresee that he would transgress in this way.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.42, trans. Robin Waterfield
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theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks