Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.7

Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God.

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

The goals I set for myself in this life will reveal most everything about who I truly am. Where there is merely a disjointed catalog of achievements, subject to change as the circumstances move around, there is only confusion and a want of gratification. Where there is constancy, an unwavering attention to what is pure and simple, there is a sincere commitment to character.

I should be rightly concerned when my life begins to take on the appearance of a shopping list. Attend fancy school. Get good grades. Acquire prestigious job. Build financial security. Hold auditions for compatible sexual partner. Develop social network. Adjust mix of priorities as conditions demand.

I should be equally concerned when my sense of what is important essentially shifts with what is popular and fashionable at the moment. I have noticed how certain phrases become temptations for a slide into relativism. It all needs to be modern, relevant, cutting-edge, up-to-date, a blueprint for the next generation.

Now by all means, I may prefer this sort of lifestyle to that, and I may wish to apply what is true and good to the particular mood of the moment. Yet once I lose sight of one guiding principle, universal and subject to no terms or conditions, I have strayed from the path.

Happiness in this life is measured only by the depth of my virtue, treating everyone I encounter with justice and respect, in constant harmony with the order of Providence.

The rest will come and go, rise and fall, but there is the root of contentment. One. Simple. Unchanging. There I can find joy, because joy proceeds from what is complete, lacking in nothing.

Simply as a reflective exercise, but also curious about the results, I once asked a group of graduating college seniors to informally jot down their life goals, their priorities for the future. Most began scribbling furiously, some moving on to a second page quite quickly. They were also quite keen to share their many hopes and dreams with others. There were exciting careers, trips to exotic places, complex plans, and eccentric bucket lists.

Eventually one student, precisely the one I suspected would do so, made a wry comment. “Don’t any of you care about being a decent human being?” A silence fell over the room, and then almost every person wrote down another phrase. When I looked the notes over later, most had “be a good person” crammed into the margins, or listed somewhere after skydiving and seeing a favorite sports team win a title.

I may want to become a rocket scientist, but it takes no rocket science to follow a moral compass in all things.

Written in 1/2014

IMAGE: According to The Daily Mail, this is how young Britons prioritized their lives in 2013. Apparently the average age of contentment, when most of these goals were expected to be achieved, is 37. The survey was commissioned by a brand of deodorant.