Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.38

Frequently consider the connection of all things in the Universe and their relation to one another. For in a manner all things are implicated with one another, and all in this way are friendly to one another.

 For one thing comes in order after another, and this is by virtue of the active movement and mutual cooperation and the unity of the substance.

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

Already as a child, I would be troubled by the sight of suffering, or by instances of death, or by experiencing a loss in others. When I was eight years old, I came across a dead cat by the brook next to our school. Hardly able to commandeer a shovel from my teacher at that tender age, I started gathering rocks from around the park to build something of a little cairn for her. It became my task for the lunch hour, and, if necessary, right after school.

Some of the other children, always eager to mind someone else’s business, saw that I was up to something. A few of the most aggressive ones gathered around me, and they found my plan laughable. They took a branch, picked up the corpse with it, and ran around the playground. A fellow I thought of as my friend, who lived only a few houses away from me, chased after me with their atrocity, waving it in my face.

“Why don’t you kiss it if you love it so much?”

As with so many people of limited character, their sense of attention was also limited. They lost interest in their ridicule. They threw aside their plaything, and went on their ways. I finished my job the next morning, before school started. I hid it well. My little cairn was still there years later, though quite a bit worse for wear, when I would walk past it coming home from college classes.

My first thought as a child was why that animal had to die. Had she done something wrong? Did she deserve it for some reason? It all seemed quite unfair.

My second thought as a child, after I was laughed at, was why I had to be mistreated. Had I done something wrong? Did I deserve it for some reason? It also seemed quite unfair.

Yet the animal had died, perhaps from old age, or from disease, or from a predator. I later learned to understand that this was quite right, because the passing of one thing for the continuation of another is not a moral wrong. It is the way of Nature. It’s part of the cycle and the pattern of the whole. One thing will make way for something else, the old transformed into the new.

It took me longer to put myself in the same place. I have come, and I will go. There is no evil in it.

Is there evil in the intentions of others? Quite possibly, but that is not for me to decide. What will come my way, will come my way. What will come to another, will come to another. My judgment and my choice are to live with Nature. The judgment and choice of another may well be to live contrary to Nature.

In a beautiful irony, we will both end up playing our own parts. I, however, will have tried to cooperate with Nature, and another will have resisted Nature. I’d like to believe I got the better half of the deal.

Those of us given the power of judgment and choice are granted a great gift. We can struggle against who we are, and against the whole, and we will find only resentment and conflict.

Or we can embrace who we are, within the whole, and we will find satisfaction and peace. That choice, of whether to love or to hate, will make all of the difference.

Written in 5/2007

IMAGE: No, my pathetic pile or rocks didn't look anywhere near that good. But the thought counts.