Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.10

The Nature of that which is universally useful has been compelled to do this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr Long)

I look at the world, and I will perhaps think that some bits are quite good, while other bits are just downright bad. I will assume that I must begrudgingly take the bad with the good, much like buying a fancy new home or car, while also paying the crippling interest rates.

If I want to wallow in drunkenness, I will have to bear the hangover.

If I want to cheat on my wife, I will have to go through the rather inconvenient effort of covering my tracks.

If I want to make it in my profession, I will need to leave behind a few mangled bodies.

This is apparently how we do it, and I am regularly advised that I should simply accept it.

I can sadly begin to think of my life as a sort of balance sheet, where the debits and credits are all fine, as long as I’m still in the black, and never in the red. The wrong I suffer, or the wrong I do, is perfectly acceptable as long as I still come out on top. Is someone else in the red? His loss is now my gain. Those are the ropes, or so they tell me.

In trying to think and live in a Stoic manner, I have begun to see things quite differently. I don’t need to tolerate an evil, commit an evil, or look away from it.

I do not delude myself. There is grave injustice in this world, and there are terrible abuses that always seem to be there in some form. What matters is what I will do in the face of such evil. Will I turn a blind eye, allow it to increase for my own gain, or actually participate in it myself? That decision is on my watch, and on no one else’s.

Nature, and the Divine Providence that rules her, will always act for the good of the whole. It is never the good of the whole at the expense of the part, but the good of the whole for the sake of each and every part.

There is certainly disharmony in this world, but it is made to give us all a chance to change it into harmony. It serves a very real function, and the tension exists for the sake of a resolution.

Evil can never be committed for the sake of a good end. Evil can, however, be transformed for the sake of a good end.

I may complain about all the injustices and abuses, about the drunkards, the adulterers, or the corporate killers. I can, to mix my metaphors, yell myself blue in the face until the cows come home.

Or I can embrace the fact that Nature has allowed all of it, not to sanctify it, but to permit it so that I, and everyone else, can help to make it right. She knows what she is about, and she cherishes all of her aspects. She does not act in vain, because everything is what it is to serve a purpose. However mysterious it may seem, there is a perfectly good reason it is there.

That things are allowed to be wrong is not a justification of evil. It can rather be a calling to do well.  Nature consents to such things because, like the mixture of the elements, each piece has its own part to play in what is universally useful, for everyone and for everything.

Do I feel that I can never do anything to make it right? I most certainly can, because I can change myself. I have now made one small part of what is universal truly useful. Nature offers that opportunity everywhere.

Written in 7/2005

Image: Jan Breughel the Younger, Frans Francken the Younger, Allegory of the Four Elements