No One Can Implicate Me in Ugliness

On what really matters in life.

“They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil…and [I] have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own.”

In book two of Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes to himself that “The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.” However negative this may seem, it’s a realistic way to live. He goes on to say that “They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil…and [I] have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own.”

Marcus finishes the paragraph with “No one can implicate me in ugliness…We were born to work together…To obstruct each other is unnatural.”

I refer to Book 2 of Meditations whenever I’m confronted with unfair people or things.

Last Wednesday I picked up my 911 from the shop after it had some maintenance done. My oldest son wanted to ride with me. As we were headed home on the busy highway, a construction truck got in front of me. After a few moments behind the truck, I noticed something blew out of the bed. Since I wanted to be safe and avoid hitting anything else that could blow out, I made the decision to get into the other lane. As I was moving to the other lane, a piece of construction material (likely plastic) struck the front bumper of my car.

Oh the pain.

The piece of material made a loud boom when it hit my bumper and then it disintegrated into a hundred pieces. My son and I were safe and the car was fine. But I had to stop the truck so I could assess the damage and get their insurance information. I pulled up to the side of the truck to get their attention and they seemed to understand what I wanted.

I signaled to get off of the highway but they continued straight. I safely re-entered the highway and pulled up to the side of them to get their attention again. The passenger looked at me with a confused and dismissive expression. Since my son and I were safe and the car was fine, I decided it was best to go home and call the police. I was able to snap a photo of the truck’s license plate before I exited.

I spoke with a police officer who looked up the license plate and told me that it was registered in a different county. There was nothing he could really do. I thanked him for his help and decided that nothing was likely to happen. 

Looks like this one was on me.

I filed a claim with my insurance company and was able to schedule an appointment with an auto body shop. After a few days of going back and forth with insurance, the shop and the police, I decided that all of this work was a waste of time. I decided to fix my car. This past weekend, I broke out my car detailing tools and removed the paint damage. No waiting. No deductible. No police report. And more importantly, no wasted time.

I started to clean up the damaged area with an aggressive cutting compound. I had the white marks from the impact gone within an hour. There were a few deeper scratches on the bumper that showed the gray primer, which I touched up with some black filler.

Was the car back to how it was? No. But it was 95% there. The real win was that I saved myself hundreds of dollars, hours of time, and an unknown amount of mental energy by taking on the work myself.

Not 100% but much better and for $0.

The driver of the at-fault truck should be paying for the damages they inflicted on my car. But I quickly realized that it wasn’t going to happen after I spoke with the police. For all I know, the driver of the truck probably had no clue that something flew out of their truck and hit me.

Marcus’ line stating that “No one can implicate me in ugliness” was exactly what I needed. Regardless of the truck driver’s intentions—good or bad—I didn’t want to be implicated in their ugliness, which took the form of not securing their load properly. Especially since my son and I were safe, which is the most important thing. The flying piece of material could have gone through the windshield and caused real damage.

Life is going to come knocking at each of our doors soon or later, that’s a given. How we respond to life is entirely up to us. And life usually takes the form of behavior, whether it be our own or somebody else’s. By understanding that everyone has a nature similar to our own, it allows us to be empathetic to a person or situation. But ultimately, we all have the choice to be implicated in ugliness.

So how are you going to deal with the people you meet today?