Everything
harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to you, O Universe. Nothing for me is
too early nor too late, which is in due time for you.
Everything
is fruit to me that your seasons bring, O Nature. From you are all things, in
you are all things, to you all things return.
The
poet says, “Dear city of Cecrops”, and can you not say, “Dear city of Zeus”?
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr
Long)
I may be
used to thinking of my world as the small confines of those things immediately
around me, and that all is right in my own world when I have those things in
accord with my wishes.
But the
insistent Stoic within me promptly suggests there are two problems with such a
view. I should never see my place in the world as being narrow, and it is never
my place to ask anything to harmonize only with me. I should rather consider my
own role, however humble, within the context of all things joined together, and
I should always strive to freely harmonize myself to that whole.
We
sometimes speak of thinking in the big picture, and then we assume this casts
aside the small picture. Instead, can I not speak of the latter only becoming
fully actualized through the former? My own particular concerns will have a
complete sense of meaning and purpose when I understand their relation within a
universal order.
Classical
Stoicism always viewed Nature as a whole, not merely as a jumbled collection of
parts. This is one reason why I, in my own experience, cannot separate, either
in theory or in practice, Stoic physics from Stoic ethics. How I try to live a
life of virtue asks me to live according to Nature, and this in turn is only
possible with a profound respect for the Providential harmony of that unity.
This
means that every time something happens, it is also the right time for it to
happen, and for every circumstance that comes my way, it is also the right
circumstance. This may often be mysterious, and I will not always grasp how and
why it has come to pass, but I know it has come to pass for a perfectly good
reason, or also through Perfect Reason, if you will.
My
place, then, is not to try to rearrange the pieces to suit my preferences, but
to rearrange my thinking and my choices to participate in the good of what
exists around me. Nor should I do this begrudgingly or resentfully, or simply
as being resigned to cold fate, but I can do so with liberation and joy,
confident that I am embracing my own part in a beautiful arranging and unfolding.
How can
any event or circumstance be timely and appropriate? Because the role I have is
to turn anything and everything toward improving my character, and thereby also
the benefit of everything around me. My power of estimation allows me to draw
out what is good, even from what may at first appear to be evil. What happens
may not be in my power, but what I do with what happens most certainly is.
The poet
Aristophanes was proud to be a citizen of Athens, of the city of Cecrops. This was surely a good thing, just as every
man should love his home or his country. Should I not, however, be even more
proud of being a citizen of the whole Universe, of the City of Zeus? My home is
not just where and when I happen to be, but the harmony of the way all things
should be together.
Written in 9/2005
Image: Leo von Klenze, The Acropolis at Athens (1846)
epic
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