Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.48

This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place.

He should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries.

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

If I see the world only through the lenses of my own feelings, my attractions and aversions, I am really only seeing myself imposed on everything around me, and so everything will take on the tint of my prejudice. Good and evil become what is pleasant or unpleasant for me, right and wrong whatever is convenient or inconvenient for me.

There is a better way. I can move beyond the influence of my own impressions, and I can take mastery over them. I can try to see things not only as they are for me, but also as they are in and of themselves. I can seek to find a loftier perspective, where I don’t just notice this or that part, but I can appreciate a sense of the whole. Anything that may have appeared as overwhelming, pointless, or unfair when viewed from too close can now perhaps be seen in a proper context from further away.

When I can appreciate the order and purpose of the relationships within all of Nature, so much of the frustration and conflict I assumed can pass away. There are so many things in this world, all distinct and different in their own way, but all of them play their own part. There are so many changes happening at all times, the constant tension of opposites, but all of them exist within a harmony.

As a child, I would always love seeing the scenery from the top of a mountain, or the city from the top of a skyscraper. There was a certain sense of awe in it, as well as of peace. In later years, I would think of that line from Browning:

God's in his heaven—

All's right with the world!

Recently, my wife dropped me off at the airport early one morning for a trip back to Boston. There was much worry on my mind, about never seeming to be able to make ends meet, about how unhappy my children seemed at their school, about all the nastiness, abuse, and petty politics at my work. I was even concerned that another trip back to where I grew up would wake up too many sleeping demons.

So I peered out the window as the plane took off, and got lost in the view as we flew ever higher. I noticed certain landmarks down below, and realized our path would take us straight over the little town I now lived in. I could still see individual houses, and the little colored specks of moving cars. I looked very carefully, and spotted my own house, with our bright blue car in the driveway. They had already made it home, and were surely having breakfast.

It was seeing that little corner of my own life as a part of the much bigger world around it that helped me, then and there, to understand and accept that world as it was, not merely as I would desire it to be. A bit of height helped to give me that context.

Written in 3/2012