Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.7

Be not ashamed to be helped, for it is your business to do your duty like a soldier in the assault on a town.

How then, if being lame you cannot mount up on the battlements alone, but with the help of another it is possible?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 7 (tr Long)

My wife and I will sometimes say, only half in jest, that we suffer from abandonment and betrayal issues respectively. This can be a volatile mixture, sometimes amusing, and sometimes disturbing. In either case, for us it means we feel that we’ve been ignored or cast aside once too often, so we find it hard to trust, and we find it hard to accept help. It breeds stubborn suspicions. “I’m fairly sure I can’t count on someone else, so I might as well do it all by myself.”

Yet here following only our passions, loosed from our understanding, will only do us even greater harm. Rational animals were not meant to merely go it alone, because reason is ordered toward being cooperative. Yes, selfish, dishonest, and disloyal people will certainly hang you out to dry. Now learn to trust and commit to the right sorts of people, and leave the scoundrels at arm’s length. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, or let one bad man lead you to assume that all of them are bad.

I might somehow feel like I am stronger when I stand only with myself, when in fact I am actually deciding to let myself be weaker. Yes, every man is only his own master. But many men together, each choosing to assist the other in ruling himself, can support one another in ways that an individual alone can never do.

Now I’ve heard people say that they have my back, and they haven’t always been sincere about it. But when they are sincere, and when I can rely upon genuine friendship, we are now twice, three times, a dozen times more effective in pursuing a shared goal and purpose than we were on our own. That is a wonderful and a beautiful thing, and no disappointments should discourage us from seeking it out.

Sometimes circumstances will indeed leave me with no companions, with no support, and with no one to lean on. In such cases, my own mind and will are all that I have, and I will work with what I have. But if Providence has granted me the chance to stand together with another, I would be a fool to cast such an opportunity aside. People are at their best when they work together.

Sentimental moments are hardly bad things if they are not merely trivial. At the time when I felt the most alone in my life, I came across a family of ducks in the park near my house. I noticed how the drake and the hen carefully kept their eyes on everything around them, while the ducklings tumbled about in the grass. Look at how Nature has made them, I told myself. How odd that seeing a few ducks together could give me strength and encouragement.

The harder side of us may enjoy the inspiration of military images, and the gentler side of us may prefer the image of marriage and family. For me it ended up being ducks.

Written in 8/2007