Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.15

Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it, and of that which is coming into existence a part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages.

In this flowing stream then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things that hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

Something of this kind is the very life of every man, like the exhalation of the blood and the respiration of the air. For such as it is to have once drawn in the air and to have given it back, which we do every moment, just the same is it with the whole respiratory power, which you did receive at your birth, yesterday and the day before, to give it back to the element from which you did first draw it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

We may use a variety of analogies to help us understand a concept, and drawing upon the likenesses of particular sense impressions to abstract universal principles can be especially helpful. For myself, this is because an idea may at first seem vague and obscure, but by binding it to something similar in my everyday experience I can appreciate a parallel. The abstraction is revealed through what is concrete.

The fact that the Universe is always in a state of change, a cycle of coming to be and passing away, can be especially difficult to grasp, especially since I imagine so many things in my own life that appear to be quite permanent. This is only the result of my limited perspective, so it can help me to comprehend a bigger picture by actually focusing on a smaller and more immediate example that shares in the same qualities.

I was immediately taken by the image of a man falling in love with a sparrow as it flies by. If I can think of all those things I am certain are lasting in this light, I will recognize how foolish my obsessions can be. What true value can there be in something that is already gone by the time I have noticed it? By stubbornly wishing things that are inherently passing to be constant, I am hardly appreciating them for what they are, but dwelling on my own imaginings.

When I was in high school, I would take the subway every day. One morning, I was drawn to a girl who got on the train and sat down a few seats away from me. She hardly had a look to her that would have interested most young men, and that was  exactly why she interested me. She had the biggest green eyes, curly auburn hair, and she was wrapped in the longest scarf I’d ever seen. She took a copy of Joyce’s Dubliners from her bag, and started reading. She seemed so kind, and a little sad. I was twitterpated.

She got off a few stops later. I had, of course, not said a word to her, and I don’t think she even gave me a single glance. Yet the next morning, all I could think of was the possibility of seeing her again. And the next morning. And the next. I crafted all sorts of wild narratives explaining who she was, and why she might possibly take an interest in me. Simply riding the subway made me think of her, and I longed to find her for years and years.

The very last time I was ever in Boston, almost thirty years later, I got on that same subway, and I found myself sitting exactly where I had been that morning. I had to laugh to myself, because that same impression came over me, as vivid as the day it had happened all those years ago. Not only was it long gone now, but it had already been gone way back then. I made something permanent of what was fleeting, and created for myself an awareness of something I knew nothing about.

I had fallen in love with a sparrow.

Now if I can only apply that awareness to all the other aspects of my life, I might be on my way to thinking about change and renewal like a real Stoic.

Instead of thinking of coming to be and passing away like static objects popping in and out of existence, I find it better not to imagine it in terms of things at all, but in terms of a continuing process. I suspect this is why the Ancients, and especially the Stoics, liked the image of flowing water, where the substance is inseparable from its constant activity. 

The image of breathing is equally powerful, as it operates on so many levels. Life itself is only possible through my motion of breathing, and it is constantly happening, even when I am not conscious of it. Inhaling and exhaling, expanding and contracting, are characteristic of the cyclical nature of all change. I receive the air, and then I give it back, just as my very life is received, and then given back. 

Most helpful for me, just as a single breath, a coming and going in an instant, is but one moment of my own life, so my own life is like a single breath in the unfolding of the Universe. That is the perspective I need to estimate the value of things rightly.

Written in 8/2015