Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.31

How have you behaved until now to the gods, your parents, brethren, children, teachers, to those who looked after your infancy, to your friends, kinsfolk, to your slaves? Consider if you have until now behaved to all in such a way that this may be said of you:

“Never has he wronged a man in deed or word.”

And call to recollection both how many things you have passed through, and how many things you have been able to endure.

And that the history of you life is now complete and your service is ended, and how many beautiful things you have seen, and how many pleasures and pains you have despised, and how many things called honorable you have spurned, and to how many ill-minded folks you have shown a kind disposition.

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

I see around me all the many different ways that people consider their lives to be worth living, and this informs me about whom I should admire as an example, and whom I should be wary of as a temptation.

Many of us look to acquisition, or reputation, or gratification as if they are worthy ends. Instead, Marcus Aurelius here asks me to consider the virtue of my actions themselves as a worthy end, determined by whether or not I have lived with fairness, kindness, appreciation, and self-control.

How have I treated others around me? Have I brought them support and comfort, or rejection and insult? When it is the former, I can be humbly content, but when it is the latter, it is a strong reminder of what remains for me to do. The task is still incomplete.

How have I faced suffering and hardship? Have I risen above it, or allowed it to rule me? Have I made myself better or worse, more caring or uncaring, when things don’t go my way? When it is the former, I can be humbly content, but when it is the latter, it is a strong reminder of what remains for me to do. The task is still incomplete.

My life could quite easily cease right now. Have I been grateful for beauty, or resentful of it? Have I been indifferent to pleasure and pain, or have I allowed myself to be ruled be them? Have I pursued only what is right for its own sake, or have I sought only to be admired for my efforts? The answer to each of these questions will tell me what is done and what is left undone.

Most telling of all for me, have I met with abuse, dismissal, or deception from others in kind, or have I responded with respect, compassion, and integrity? There has been some success here, but also much failure.

I should be happy with the successes, but the failures should not have to make me miserable. The failures will only make me miserable if I do not use them as a means to finally getting it right. Then even the failures will have served what is good, however indirectly, whenever I have tried to fix what I have broken, to make something better of what is worse. 

There came a point of awareness for me, when I could no longer hide away from my mistakes. Feeling ashamed of them, I had long hoped they might disappear if I only ignored them. Yet when I honestly asked myself if I had only sought to do right for others, and the answer was clearly no, I realized I was only compounding the wrong. I needed to use this as an inspiration, as a way to regain the lost ground, as a means to make amends whenever I could, and to start all over again whenever I couldn’t.

Marcus Aurelius asks me to face a soul-searching question. However I may respond to it, I need never be afraid of the answer. I only need to be afraid of what I do with the answer.

Written in 8/2006