Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.15

Remember that as it is a shame to be surprised if the fig tree produces figs, so it is to be surprised if the world produces such and such things of which it is productive.

And for the physician and the helmsman it is a shame to be surprised if a man has a fever, or if the wind is unfavorable.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8 (tr Long)

I once listened to a woman, during one and the same conversation, explain to me both that it was fair for her to abandon her husband, while also unfair of her son to abandon her.

Why can’t he just get over it? I don’t love him anymore. He needs to move on!

And then later. . .

How can he treat me that way? Doesn’t he know that love isn’t something you just turn on and off?

It was a stark and powerful reminder of how we wish to be the masters of our circumstances, how we expect to receive what we want and be spared what we don’t want. We pursue this even to the extreme of holding completely contradictory views of love, depending upon our own fickle desires. Other people can be disposable or irreplaceable, and we are shocked when the situation doesn’t cooperate as expected.

But we should never be taken aback by any situation, and we should understand that all conditions can serve us rightly, if only we view them in the context of our own responsibility. I may or I may not prefer this or that development, but all that remains for me is to meet it with virtue. I may not have predicted its arrival, but I can be prepared for it nonetheless. I am ready if I can decide to give love, even if I may not always receive it.

A plant may produce fruit, a man may become sick, and the weather may suddenly change. Now I may treat one of these as good, or another as bad, but they are really all the same, because they are all a part of Nature unfolding as it should. Let me follow it, and let me discover what is good within it, and let me do what is right from it. Let me harvest if I am a farmer, or heal if I am a doctor, or adjust the sails if I am a captain.

Above all else, let me act with wisdom, with courage, with temperance, and with justice in all things, simply because I am human. Then I am prepared for all things, and then I will do right by all things. And when it is my time to go, let me go with dignity.

Has the whim of my affection for another shifted, or has the affection of another changed with time? These things will indeed happen, but whatever may happen, I am the one who will decide whether I will have the decency to love. That way nothing ever comes as a surprise, and every circumstance will yield good fruit. 

Written in 2/2008