Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.4

All existing things soon change, and they will either be reduced to vapor, if indeed all substance is one, or they will be dispersed.

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

There are some things I may want to be different, and there are some things I may want to stay the same. A sign of wisdom is being able to gladly accept that everything will change, whether I wish it to or not, and the only thing that remains reliable as circumstances shift around me is my own commitment to what is within my power, for whatever time I am here.

As I have grown older, my experience of the passage of time has shifted dramatically. Many of us will recall how time seemed to move more slowly when we were younger, precisely because there was less of it to consider, and so everything seemed far more stable. Yet from the broader perspective of age, what once appeared quite large and unassailable now appears quite small and fragile.

This can be of great assistance for me, since I can learn to care less for the passing qualities of life, both the ones I craved and the ones I despised. A pretty face means far less when I learn that looks come and go. A painful wound seems less of a burden when compared to all the other pains, as well as the many joys. Throughout all of this, my character is still mine.

Yet the passage of time can also be a hindrance for me, when I cling to something long gone, and I find it desirable only because it is long gone. Age can also bring with it an unhealthy nostalgia. Again, however, an honest appeal to experience can set this right. I shouldn’t be fooled by an impression of something that is more imagined than real, and I shouldn’t cherry-pick what is pleasant over what is unpleasant. Having seen more of change can indeed provide that fuller perspective.

Whatever the case, seeing things come and go, in greater scope and more rapid succession, should not be about mourning a loss or celebrating a gain. The coming and the going, after all, will happen on its own. The consistency of my own judgment is what can provide continuity to it all, and this requires that I never measure myself by what has been done to me, but by what I am doing right here and now.

I am already forgetting more than I remember, but the other day I had a very vivid realization that most everything I did when I was young, both the achievements and the failures, has left behind virtually no evidence at all. My own memory remains, sometimes blurred, diminished, magnified or contorted over the years, but that too will soon be gone.

Now this might have terrified me at another time, but I actually found the insight to be quite a relief, not because of what was left behind, but because of what remained. It offered me an opportunity to value what did matter, in others, in myself, and for all of Nature when both others and myself have moved along.

Written in 7/2014 

IMAGE: Pieter Christoffel Wonder, Father Time (1810)