Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.8

You do not have the leisure to read. But you have the leisure to check arrogance.

You have the leisure to be superior to pleasure and pain.

You have the leisure to be superior to love of fame, and not to be vexed at stupid and ungrateful people, and even to care for them.

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

“Oh, I’m so busy! I just don’t have the time anymore to do all the things that I’d like to do!”

That is indeed true. But do I still have the time to do all the things I need to do?

So with only so much time, what do I pursue and what do I neglect? I commit myself to my profession, of course, that makes me money, and to my social life, that helps me promote my reputation, and to my various diversions, that help me to increase my gratification. All of that will apparently help me to feel better about myself, and to make me be important.

Quite right. After all of that, there probably won’t be much time left for anything at all. I can then congratulate myself on a job well done, and laugh about how I wish I could do more.

Or I could just start doing different things. I could choose to finally become a good man, instead of simply reading books about being a good man. Where are the priorities?

Time is best spent upon what matters. I could choose to love, rather than profit. I could choose to show mercy, instead of looking to the bottom line. I could choose to care, instead of dismissing. I could choose to give, instead of receiving. In fact, I could see that it is by my giving that I actually receive.

“It’s nothing personal,” they say. No. Everything is personal, because everything is about our social nature, our nature to live in justice with others. Remove justice from the equation, and you have removed everything of human value. Every single thing. You have made your neighbor a disposable commodity.

So I ask myself, how can I be too busy to love? What else could be more important than that? I look at my own need, and I see an empty hole, the one left by my unwillingness to offer rightly of myself, in contrast to offering others for myself.

I look to the Good Samaritan, that fellow some thought of as the filth of the earth, who gave of himself to be the fruit of the earth. Not a religious sort of fellow? Not a problem. Love shows no bounds. No man can ever be too busy to show concern. The commitment itself takes no time at all, though the nature of that commitment will change most everything else to which I dedicate my time.

I may not have the time to read, but I always have the time to live well. 

Written in 2/2008

IMAGE: Vincent Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan (1890)