Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.28

There are three relations between you and other things: the one to the body that surrounds you; the second to the Divine cause from which all things come to all; and the third to those who live with you.

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

Who and what I am is inseparable from my relationship to what is around me, to the fullness of the world I live in. Yes, I may often feel quite alone, but this is really just because I selfishly decide I am not getting the attention I somehow think I deserve. I am a part of the whole just the same, and I cannot be isolated from the whole.

Even as the recent trend has been to deny that there is anything Divine at all, and therefore that we can hardly have a relationship with what doesn’t exist, we may still be fairly sure that we understand both our own humanity, and the humanity of others. But I suggest that we don’t usually know ourselves, or our neighbors, very well at all, quite possibly since we can’t begin to grasp who we are if we are closed to where we came from.

The part makes absolutely no sense outside of the context of the whole, and will likewise never function separately from the other parts. This is because it is the order and design of the whole that gives meaning to every part.

Wise people usually warned me not to get caught in this or that -ism, or to lose a definition in this or that pigeonhole. Too much of what we think and say is about what we reject as different, instead of what we accept as common, and so I am often wary of missing the forest for the trees.

This is especially true when I am considering questions of self-identity, morality, or divinity. So quick to only make my understanding fit my own preference, I end up not even considering myself properly, let alone considering God, or my neighbor.

It is in such a light, therefore, that I see the three relations Marcus Aurelius speaks of. Many years ago, someone shared a thought with me, that the love of self and the love of neighbor necessarily went together, and that neither could really exist without the other.

Another fellow, who we didn’t even think was still listening to our conversation, immediately chimed in, that neither love of self or of neighbor was possible without the love of God, because you can’t have an effect without the source.

We understood one another, and no doctrinal bickering was required. I should look to the horizontal, to other people around me, and look to the vertical, the Divine above me, if I ever wish to most fully know myself. I will only be comfortable in my own skin when I discover how I fit into the world. 

Written in 3/2008