The Busybody

She may have been the god of war incarnate,
For I wanted to slap her and pull her hair.
She glowered my way, her greedy heart seething
With a selfish and jealous vacant stare.
And when I’d finally had enough,
I looked into her pitiful eye
And asked her, "What would it take to fulfill you,
To make you happy, you sullen sky?
You empty-threated cloud with no lightning,
You promise of thunder, but never rain!
You don't want the hay, yet you wallow the manger
To try to make him yours again.
Why don't you know yourself? Why don't you learn?
Why won't you find your own way to glory,
And quit your leeching, bottomless bitters,
And write, if you can, a better story?"

And then I smiled, because I have finally learned
Not to let jealous, petty people ruin my day...

And this I learned from Marcus Aurelius himself,
In Meditations, Chapter 2, of course… for… it is always Chapter 2:

 

“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me; not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.[A] To act against one another, then, is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.”—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Chapter 2.