Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.58

Love that only which happens to you, and is spun with the thread of your destiny. For what is more suitable?

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

The idea of destiny or fate might scare us, but this will only be so if we assume that what must of necessity happen to us is all that defines us. Events will unfold in their own way, most of them beyond our power to determine. Hard experience itself should be enough to teach us this.

If we reflect further, sound thinking should also indicate that no effect proceeds without a cause, and that all things are joined together for a reason, all of them acting with purpose for the sake of the whole. Because the Universe reveals purpose, it also reveals Intelligence.

But this may be frightening, because it seems to mean that we are just pieces being pushed about, back and forth, by far greater forces. If it all has to happen, why should we make any effort at all? It was meant to be, after all, and there’s no fighting what’s meant to be!

This misses the fact that we too share and participate in this Intelligence, and that our own thoughts, choices, and actions are not in conflict with Providence, but a very expression of it. Yes, things will happen, but now comes my distinct role. I can accept what will happen, while at the very same time understanding that what I decide to do with what happens is still entirely up to me. I am myself an active aspect of the whole, as a player is in a drama or an orchestra. I am helping to shape what is meant to be.

In other words, that there is a destiny is itself already open to the part we decide to play within that destiny. The circumstances are not up to us, but our responses certainly are up to us.

Recognizing oneself as an active participant is the key to not being frightened by fate. That way, what happens can be freely and gladly embraced, knowing that any condition, and any situation, is an opportunity to live well. Since the Stoic grasps that his happiness is in his own action, every given state of affairs offers him the chance to do something good with it.

That isn’t, for me, a scary sense of destiny, but a beautiful sense of destiny.

Still, it isn’t always easy to put this into daily practice. Why has my dearest friend turned away? Why has my son died? Why does this pain come to me, but not to others? To simply say that it happens for a reason doesn’t seem very comforting. But if I add further that a part of the reason it happens is precisely for me to do good, by it, with it, and through it, this helps me to understand.

I can love what happens, anything that happens, and find it suitable and right, if I consider how my strand in the thread is joined to all the other strands, and how my own choices can exist in harmony with other events. 

Written in 1/2008