Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.25

Such as bathing appears to you—oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting—so is every part of life and everything.

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

Taken out of a proper Stoic context, this sort of statement sounds rather depressing and discouraging. Stoicism is always meant to lift us up, and never to bring us down, but when we allow ourselves to become so accustomed to only negative thoughts, we will assume that pointing out how humble or small something is surely means that it is also useless and pointless.

Every aspect of our time on this world is indeed fragile, subject to corruption, soiled, smeared, and smudged. And yes, I need to remember exactly that very point when I make things seem mighty and glorious that are hardly mighty and glorious at all. My body is frail, my thoughts are fleeting, my feelings can toss me this way and that, and no state of affairs in life is sufficient to be reliable, to offer me any peace of mind.

Yet I may still try to convince myself that my body is so strong, my thinking incapable of error, my passions without any flaw. I may admire the power of my possessions, the purity of my reputation, the grandeur of my place at the table. This is when I must understand that all of it is like straw, that what I think is divine is mundane, that what I perceive as sacred is profane. It isn’t beautiful at all, simply by itself, but rather tarnished and dull, even ugly, at least in the sense that my false estimation is ugly.

It’s not ambrosia and nectar, it’s dirty bathwater.

That doesn’t make my life meaningless, however, not in the least, because it can permit me to redirect my attention. Each and every one of those individual little bits of the world might not be all that much on its own, but what matters is how I can fit myself in together with the pieces, and how all the pieces fit together as a whole.

My part, however fleeting and humble, is to do good in each and every circumstance. Committed to this way of living, I can also know that the good of the whole is what gives significance to all of the parts.

On each and every day, I will find people who are dishonest, selfish, manipulative, or just thoughtless. I will lose things I tell myself I deserve, and gain things I know I don’t deserve. Some things that happen will be frustrating, and others will seem ready to destroy me.

Through all of that, if I keep in mind that all these circumstances don’t mean as much as I’m making of them, I can attend to what is truly decent and worthy. I can know what to live for. 

Written in 3/2008