Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.45

As it happens to you in the amphitheater and such places, that the continual sight of the same things and the uniformity make the spectacle wearisome, so it is in the whole of life.

For all things above, below, are the same and from the same. How long, then?

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

It is rarely that I will view a new film, or watch a new television show, or even read a new book, and not have a frustrating sense that I have seen all of this before. We don’t even try to conceal old ideas and plots within a new skin, but are quite happy to openly “reinvent”, “reboot”, or “reimagine” what came before.

There are some of what we now call “franchises” that I have seen brought back three times in the span of my life, differing only in the fashionable cosmetics of politics, in the platitudes that happen to be trendy at the moment.

That spectacle, the covering of tired formulas with new buzzwords, can be quite disturbing for me. I do not necessarily expect a completely new creation, because, after all, there is ultimately nothing new under the sun. But I deeply appreciate a different perspective, a transformation of what is already familiar into something I could not have expected. Therein is the originality of art.

I do not have a personal preference for the style or for the values of John Gardner’s Grendel, for example, but I have long deeply admired that incredibly clever turn on an old story. Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead had much the same effect on me.

I suspect the problem is, in the end, that most of us are hardly being creative or artistic at all. We are selling a product, and we are drawn to what wins a profit by means of the lowest common denominator. As it was in the Circuses of Rome, so it is in the Hollywood of America. And so it is in Washington, on Wall Street, and at the Ivy League schools.

And just as the pabulum of entertainment, politics, business, and academics becomes tiresome, so too life can sometimes feel like it is becoming old hat. There can always remain more good to be done, more paths to discover, or more work to give us purpose, but there also comes a time when we are ready to leave the ring, to depart this mortal coil.

We will have realistically seen what we can see, and we will have realistically done what we can do. Now it’s time to go.

I have become so familiar with the idea that a longer life is a better life, or that I must cling to existence with all my might and at any expense, that asking “How much more?” seems like a shameful surrender. Yet quantity should never be confused with quality. Living more isn’t living well. Living well is living well.

I should, I think, never seek death, but I should also never avoid it. It will come when it will come, and my only concern must be about getting my job done within the time prescribed. If I’ve done the job as best I can, there is nothing wrong in looking forward to a well-earned retirement.

My part to be played in the amphitheater is rightly only for so long. There is nothing shameful in wondering when the performance will be over. 

Written in 6/2007