Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.17

Above, below, all around are the movements of the elements. But the motion of virtue is in none of these.

It is something more divine, and advancing by a way hardly observed, it goes happily on its road.

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

Virtue is not a motion of the matter we see directly around us, which has a passive principle of being moved.  Virtue is a motion of the mind, which is an active principle of moving. A man does not improve himself when his location, his position, or the state of his body is changed, but he improves himself by changing the state of his soul.

It is for this reason that many of us will barely even notice the action of virtue. It cannot be held in the hand, it cannot be bought and sold, and it is not an object of sense pleasure. Virtue is, therefore, something that is not, so to speak, on our radar. It does not warrant our attention, because we do not even recognize an excellence of mind and the building of character as anything of value.

The vicious man will certainly notice you with desire when you are convenient to him, and he will notice you with frustration when you are inconvenient to him. At all other times, however, he will look right through you. 

It took me some time to not think of this as burden, but as an opportunity. I would feel deeply sad or angry when people ignored or dismissed me, and I wondered what happened to all those people who had proudly called themselves friends.

Then it occurred to me that I might be doing something right when all the wrong sorts of people were disinterested. They are not the friends I need. I have nothing they want, which is actually quite a good thing. I can use the coming and going of their attention as a yardstick for my own success and failure.

And so I can go happily on my own way, as if I were invisible. I will not need to be in conflict with people who have no shared values with me. This is why virtue itself can pass unhindered through suffering and hardship, because it cannot be harmed by any quality so unlike itself.

When I was working at a church in the city, there was a fellow who would panhandle outside our door most every day. We never asked him to leave, because he was doing no harm, and though he was grateful when we brought him out meals, he would refuse any offers of a referral to a shelter. “Can’t live like that,” he would say. I would sometimes sit with him for a moment, and give him whatever was left in my pack of cigarettes. “I’ve got another one inside,” I would tell him.

We were right across from a major hospital, so plenty of doctors, nurses, and professional types would walk down our sidewalk. Almost everyone simply ignored him as he sat there. I once asked him if it he felt discouraged that so few people seemed to give him any attention.

He put on an exaggerated grimace. “You’re paying attention to me, aren’t you? And why would I want people like that to pay attention to me? Better off without them.”

I asked him if he’d ever read any Marcus Aurelius.

“Never heard of the guy. Nice fellow?”

“I’d like to think so.”

Written in 1/2007