tan(philosophy)

Although this blog is mainly about science & math, today I want to go off on a philosophical tangent--I mean I don't call myself a polymath for nothing...

Last night, with the snaps, crackles, and pops of fireworks as whitenoise, I was busy reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (he's the wise old Roman emperor from Gladiator). At any rate, I came upon this rather confusing sentence,

"But if you won't keep track of what your own soul's doing, how can you not be unhappy?"

-wait whaaat?

I tried reading it in parts, "if you don't listen to your own soul" then  "how can you not be un-happy," but I still didn't get it, so I tried again, albeit with computer science!

if( !(listen to yourself) )
     you=unhappy;

-But that godforsaken"how" was still confusing me! Thus, I decided to combine computer science with math (computer science is not my forte).

f(x)=un
f(happy)=un-happy
"But if you won't keep track of what your own soul's doing"=if you ignore yourself
"how can you not be"=you're gonna be

With this in mind, I went at it again...

"If you ignore yourself
then
your gonna be f(happy)"

which is equivalent to

"If you ignore yourself
then
your gonna be un-happy"

Alas, I still didn't get it (it had been a slow day), so I substituted a synonym for "un-happy" via the transitive property and presto!

"If you ignore yourself..."
then
your gonna feel like crap."

Wise words Mr. Aurelius.