Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.14

No longer wander at hazard, for neither will you read your own memoirs, nor the acts of the ancient Romans and Greeks, and the selections from books which you were reserving for your old age.

Hasten then to the end that you have before you, and throwing away idle hopes, come to your own aid, if you care at all for yourself, while it is in your power.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 3 (tr Long)

“That’s all right, no worries. I know it’s important, but I’ll get to it later.”

Few words have gotten me into deeper trouble. If I truly know something to be important, I will do it now, and not put something else in its place. It will only be as important to me as it stands in the priority of my own thoughts and actions.

Such a priority is certainly one about the time that is given to me, but it is also about the depth of the concern I have within that time. Whether or not there will be an opportunity down the road, I should strive to act with virtue now. A word may express an intention, but an action binds that word with true commitment.

I have foolishly told myself how much I may love and cherish someone, for example, and been content only with those thoughts in my head, planning vaguely to act on them someday. It is certainly too late for me when time, which never offers any guarantee other than the immediate now, finally runs out, but it is also already too selfish of me, at any time, to withhold anything that Nature asks me to give. If I care for someone, I must do what is in my power to assist him in his own struggles, and if I am sorry for the wrong I have done, I must do what is in my power to make it right.

Now. Not later.

In college, I smugly made myself a list of all the “Great Books” I had to read to be properly educated. I was so busy making the list that I often neglected to start reading them, and when I did read them, I was usually far more worried about giving the impression of a decent life than the real living of a decent life. College was great at teaching me the fine art of clever appearances.

I had always assumed that everyone eventually “got wise” to life, but I have seen that this is hardly the case. The weight of procrastination and poor habits has never made it any easier for me to be a good man.

Marcus Aurelius speaks of the “idle hopes”, what I have often experienced as the vain expectation that circumstances will somehow end up going a certain way, and then I can go about fixing everything I might have broken. I have found that a very silly end to aim for. It is sadly all about what happens, not about what I choose to make happen. As a creature with a body, I am acted upon, but as a creature with life and reason, I can also act for myself.

It is the interplay of these two active and passive principles that drives all the motions of Nature, and it’s time I played my own small part. Stoic physics and Stoic ethics go together.

I had a wonderful student, a few years back, who would often come to me just to unwind and bounce ideas back and forth, and I noticed that she often spoke of her relationship with her parents as “doomed”. Now I hope I was wise enough not to try and run her life for her, which would, of course, defeat the whole purpose of living, but I tried to respectfully suggest that nothing was ever doomed unless we allowed it be so.

“But you don’t understand, because I can never make them happy! They always want me to do something I can’t do, or expect something I can’t give them!”

I most certainly did understand. I have seen in my own life that I can never make others happy, but I have also seen that this does not doom my love for them. It is within my power to give that love, but not within my power to expect it in return. It is my duty to act, and not my duty to make others act. Perhaps the conditions will not work out as I may have preferred, but I do not consider that something doomed.

I have come to my own aid if I have done right, and Providence willing, I may even help someone else come to his own aid and get it right for himself. None of it is about what may or may not happen, or whether my memoirs are worth reading. There is no putting it off for some other time. I can practice the virtues right here and now, and trust Providence to take care of the rest. 

Written in 3/2005

Image: Some of those "Great Books" we like to say we will someday read. . .