Within
ten days you will seem a god to those to whom you are now a beast and an ape,
if you will return to your principles and the worship of reason.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr
Long)
Man
rises to the level of the Divine when he freely embraces his nature as a
creature of mind, and he falls to the level of the beasts when he allows
himself to be ruled by the pursuit of his passions. The former is a life of
wisdom, of loving what is right and good, while the latter is a life of
gratification, of wanting to possess and consume.
I may
well be missing the significance of a period of ten days, but it certainly
seems to be a rather short time. I can’t help but first think of all the
advertising that tells me how I can become rich, lose weight, transform myself
into someone attractive, or learn to impress others so very quickly. I then
realize that those sorts of things are about gaining gratification, and not
about gaining wisdom at all. I really don’t know if I could become a
millionaire in a week, but could I become a better man in a week?
Yes, if
only I truly and sincerely reorder my values to listen to what reason tells me,
and if I act according to what is right instead of what is convenient. To
change my thinking is always within my power, because it just requires my
conviction. Becoming rich, whether overnight or over a lifetime, is a far
trickier thing, because it depends on everything outside of my power. I will
become a good man when I act like one, but I won’t become a rich man just
because I act like one.
A reason
I have always been drawn to eccentric friends is their ability to cut right
through the illusions at the most wonderful of times. Many years back, a small
ragtag group of us would spend time in a local coffeehouse, and almost every
day this fellow would slide his way over to our table. After some light
conversation, he would remind us that he had an investment opportunity waiting
for us that would make us rich by the end of the year. I would patiently smile
and nod.
One of
my friends, however, once had enough of it. “I’ve got something better than
that,” he said. “I can offer you inner peace and moral fulfillment by the end
of today.”
“How’s
that?” the huckster asked, slightly taken aback.
“All you
need to do is to stop telling people you can make them rich right now, and
you’ll be a good man by tonight.”
I have
often seen people’s circumstances change from one moment to the next, but that
is really neither here nor there, because those things themselves do not make
us who we are. I have also seen people change their own attitudes from one
moment to the next, and I have seen those changes as being profound and lasting
when they rest on the insight that we can master ourselves, regardless of the
circumstances.
A
godlike man makes the decision to follow the reason and the principles within
him. The beastly man has chosen to abandon them, though there is nothing
outside himself that is keeping him from nurturing what is inside himself.
Written in 9/2005
Image: William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar (c. 1805)
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