You asked about Marcellinus, and the answer is: not well, but not yet hopeless. He avoids me because he knows I'll tell him the truth, and the truth is the one thing his considerable intelligence has been organized to deflect.
This is his method: before you can say anything, he says it first, but as a joke. He'll mock himself, then mock you, then mock the entire philosophical tradition — he has a file of hypocritical philosophers ready for deployment, men caught in adultery or haunting cafes or philosophizing from their carriages. The laughter comes quickly and covers everything. It's a kind of genius, actually, and a kind of ruin.
I've decided to approach him anyway. He'll laugh at me. I may laugh at him. But I know something about this particular kind of merriment: it doesn't last. Watch such men carefully and you'll see the pattern — laughter in excess, and then, very soon after, rage in excess. The wit is a thin roof over real weather.
What I'm aiming for isn't a cure. That may not be available. I'm aiming for a pause — habits of stopping, which with time can become the stopping itself. To men seriously stricken, relief is a substitute for health, and relief is not nothing.
While I prepare myself for that conversation, let me turn to you, who are in a different situation entirely — who have come some distance and know both where you've been and how far you have yet to go. Stand firm. Don't count the number of things that threaten you; count only those that can actually reach you, and you'll find the number smaller than it appeared.
And here's today's thought, which I've been pressing into service from Epicurus across many letters: I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know, they do not approve, and what they approve, I do not know.
Every serious philosophical tradition has said something like this, in its own terms. The favor of people who haven't done the work can only be won by not doing the work — by making yourself recognizable to them, which means becoming what they are.
What you think of yourself is much more to the point than what others think of you.
If I saw you applauded by crowds, praised by everyone, cheered at your entrance — I would pity you. I know what road leads there. Philosophy will make you prefer to please yourself rather than the populace, will make you weigh judgments rather than count them, will make you live without fear. But it will not make you popular. That's not a side effect. It's part of the promise.
Yours, preparing for a difficult conversation,