Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.2

Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part.

Throw away your books. No longer distract yourself, for it is not allowed, but as if you were now dying, despise the flesh. It is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in.

The third, then, is the ruling part. Consider this: you are an old man, no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer either be dissatisfied with your present lot, or shrink from the future.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2 (tr Long)

Stoicism has a wonderful way of helping us to see things from a new perspective, sometimes revealing the direct opposite of what we thought was true, or pointing to a complete reversal of what we thought was valuable in life. I have often called this the “Stoic Turn”, and it can at the same time be both an unnerving and a liberating experience.

Consider how we define ourselves. For all of our insistence on respecting what people are on the “inside”, we are usually quite obsessed with what is on the outside. We worship the things of the body: its appearance, its pleasure, its strength, its health, its longevity, and its possessions.

What fabric have I draped over my body today, and what chemicals line my face? What kind of box does my body live in, and what kind of smaller box do I move around in? When my body goes to yet another box that gives me the pieces of paper to acquire the first two boxes, do the other bodies there make me feel good about myself? When I get back to my own box at night, how will I gratify my body? Will any of this make any difference when I end up dead in one final box?

The body is just an arrangement of matter, and all the things that adorn it are just different arrangements of matter. What gives that matter life, what we call the breath, is just the motion of matter. These things are brought into existence by combination, they exist very briefly in a fragile and precarious state, and then they suddenly cease to exist by separation.

To “despise” the flesh is not to want to destroy it, but to recognize that there is absolutely nothing about it that is worth loving for its own sake. I should be completely indifferent to my body, not by failing to care for it, but by knowing that it only becomes good or bad depending on how it is ordered and directed by reason, by the ruling part.

What is meaningful and valuable in this life is not the mere presence of the body, or the fact that it is living instead of dead, or how that body is tied together to other bodies. What gives dignity and purpose to life is the ability to understand what is true and good, to freely choose it, and to act upon it. It is not merely in the living, but in how well we live. It is through awareness, both of itself and its world, that the ruling part guides the way, and can inform us how it is only the excellence of our own judgments and actions themselves that can give us worth.

The higher should rule the lower, but in our lives we find these roles are too often reversed. The mind should be telling the body how to assist as we grow in wisdom and in virtue, but instead the body tells the mind how to merely be a tool for greater power and pleasure. The strings are being pulled from the wrong direction.

My life is short, and I must learn to make the right choice, to no longer desire the lesser things, about how rich or gratified I am in the flesh, but to dedicate everything to the greater things, about how virtuous and dignified I am in my thoughts and deeds. If I can turn around my thinking, I can also turn around my priorities.

Written in 1/2000