Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.23

Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear, both the things that are and the things that are produced. For substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties, and there is hardly anything that stands still.

And consider this that is near to you, this boundless abyss of the past and of the future in which all things disappear.

How then is he not a fool who is puffed up with such things, or plagued about them, and makes himself miserable? For they vex him only for a time, and a short time.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5 (tr Long)

I once grew impatient and frustrated with this sort of passage, complaining that it all seemed to be about making myself feel insignificant, and ignoring my happiness. I found myself answering my own objection, since there was no one else around to listen. Perhaps it is actually about making my apparent problems seem insignificant, so that I can then pay proper attention to my happiness.

We say it far more often than we mean it, or even understand it, but things only make sense from the right perspective. As circumstances become larger or smaller in my estimation, they become more or less important in the order of my priorities. It can, therefore, be of great help to measure with the proper scale. Things that seemed so overwhelming can suddenly become a trifle, and what I had overlooked can suddenly become quite relevant.

When I have felt physical pain from something like a toothache, for example, the expectation that it will pass can help make it bearable. The suffering may feel intense, but it grows smaller within the larger context of time.

I can do much the same with the obnoxious neighbor, the demanding boss, or the thoughtless friend. How meaningful is this, after all, in the picture of the whole? Knowing it to be only a tiny bit, however annoying, in the fullness of life, is it worth all the attention, and thereby making it far more important than it really is?

It can even work with the situations that seem far more imposing. I remember the moment when I realized it was quite likely I would suffer from the Black Dog for the rest of my life. I had now been waking up most every morning for fifteen years, filled with those crippling feelings, and I was slowly becoming more adept at managing them.

Look, I’ve done this for years now. What are a few years more? What is any of this really in the big picture? There is the infinite in every direction, the flow of constant change, and here I am, fretting about how some little demons in my soul, or chemicals in my head, are messing around with my mood.

Yes, it hurts. Now look at everything else that is good, beautiful, and pleasant in this wide world, in the whole pattern of Providence, whether far away or right outside my window. It still hurts, but it puts the hurt in context. I will only neglect my own happiness when I attend more to inferior things, and thereby attend less to superior things.

Some may think this nonsensical, but speaking only for myself, I have found there is no better anti-depressant than putting things into perspective. It isn’t that I’m unimportant, but rather that the things I worry so much about are really unimportant. Now I can get on with the business of living for what matters. I can begin to find joy in what I do, not misery in relying on what may be done to me.

Ah, Casablanca, your script seems to produce more Stoic gems every time I look:

I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

And that, I suggest, is why Rick can be completely content with himself at the end of the film, while he was completely lost at the beginning.

Written in 7/2006