Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.20

Nature has had regard in everything, no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like the man who throws up a ball.

What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down, or even to have fallen?

And what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst?

 The same may be said of a light also.

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

Something of a Stoic version of what goes up, must come down.

We are always quite interested at the start of things, and absorbed by the middle of things, but we may then feel discouraged as they wind down, disappointed after they have all ended.

I notice this in how we treat the ages of our own existence. We celebrate youth, and glorify middle age, when a man can brag of all his greatest achievements, but we awkwardly look the other way at old age, and at death.

Bu why should this have to be so? The good is present within the whole, not merely within this or that part. It isn’t even that the loss of the departure becomes more bearable in contrast to the gain of the arrival, but rather that each and every aspect of things, all stages of change, are expressions of the fullness and harmony within Nature.

It comes into its own specific existence, it increases, it reaches a height, it decreases, and it is transformed into a new existence. There is no beginning of anything new without the end of something old, and so the old is as vital and necessary, and as beautiful, as the new.

New lights are lit all of the time, and old lights go out. The births and deaths of stars are really much like the births and deaths of men, with only the spans of time seeming to make a difference. Speed the cycles up, or slow them down, but their significance remains the same.

So why would I prefer youth to age, or rising to falling, or beginnings to endings? Each must be, and so each is a benefit. There is no story without a start, a middle, and a finish, and there can only be fresh stories when they follow from finished stories.

I try to remember that a completion is as noble and satisfying as an initiation, or that the last step of a journey is just as exciting as the first step of a journey. It’s all there, because it is supposed to be there. I need to give Providence more credit, and see with a broader vision than my immediate passion. 

Written in 3/2008