Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.43

You are a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

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

I notice how often we all swing from extreme to extreme, from thinking far too much of ourselves, to thinking far too little of ourselves. At one moment, I may think I am the source of everything worthy, and at another I may consider myself to be totally worthless. The estimation can even change at a moment’s notice.

One part of this may well be how familiar we are with playing a part, and so we are used to modifying an image to fit the circumstances. In hindsight, I realize how much of what I was being taught in school was about actually maintaining an appearance to others, turning on the confidence and bravado, or toning it down with humility and deference, whatever the situation required.

Yet another part, the one that is completely sincere and within our own minds, can be just as variable. My own experience suggests that this is because we may have no real foundation or measure by which to understand our own value, no anchor to keep us from being swept this way and that by the changing currents. We allow our sense of self to depend upon the Fortune that will come and go, and not upon the Nature that is always there.

I may feel like a giant when things around me are pleasing and convenient, and like a worm when things around me are troublesome and inconvenient. That sense of self, however, is not about the self at all, but about what happens to the self.

I am far better served by considering myself on the merits of my own nature, and its place within the whole of Nature. Pride and humility do not need to be so variable, and they need not be about putting on a show. I can then be deeply confident in what is within my power, and deeply humble about the things outside of my power.

I have always loved the language of this classic Stoic phrase. The body I carry with me, and all the possessions, and honors, and diversions that go with it, are already dead things, with no life in themselves, and with nothing lasting or reliable.

What then is left of me? It may well be little, only one small part within a much greater whole, but it is my soul, that power to understand, to choose, to be the master of my own actions. My thoughts and actions are only my own, they do not determine the whole Universe, and that is why my soul is little. But it is still a soul, a vital principle that can freely participate in the activity that binds everything together. That is itself something noble, and something wondrous.

The beauty of any and all consciousness is its power to come to know itself, and to proceed beyond itself to know its own purpose within the order of other things. True humility and true pride, about the right aspects and in the right way, are only possible in conjunction with one another.

Written in 1/2006

Image: Kurt Lehmann, Humility (1959).  The newer statue stands in the old ruins of the Aegidienkirche in Hannover, Germany, destroyed by bombing in World War II. I have always been struck by how the figure kneels before us, but also holds out its arms in a strong embrace.