Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.37

Do not disturb yourself by thinking of the whole of your life. Let not your thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles that you may expect to befall you.

But on every occasion ask yourself, what is there in this that is intolerable and past bearing? For you will be ashamed to confess.

In the next place remember that neither the future nor the past pains you, but only the present.

But this is reduced to a very little, if you only circumscribe it, and chide your mind if it is unable to hold out against even this.

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

At any given moment, it can seem that the weight of life becomes unbearable. Memories of the past can haunt us, the pain of the present can seem overwhelming, and concern for the future can fill us with anxiety. I may feel swept away, as if everything is beyond my control, and it is such a sense of helplessness that feeds into the despair of hopelessness.

What we like to think of as a distinctly modern problem, a sort of existential dread, is hardly anything new. Its root, I suggest, is not about the state of world around us at all, but rather about the focus of the thinking within us. Our concern follows from our own judgments, where we choose to give force to things that need not have any power over us at all.

When I am faced with such a burden at any given moment, a helpful exercise is to attend only to that very moment, and to nothing else. What is it that I am confronting right here and now, and what is it that I can do in order to remedy my worry right here and now? Once I have stripped away all my own imaginings, I am left with something quite manageable.

I should not gawk at the full scope of all the things I believe are bringing me down. I should stick to what is immediately at hand, pushing aside the many diversions of my own creation.

The things from my past are no more, and only my own estimation is still allowing them to have any effect upon me. They are long gone, while it is just my own thinking that is giving them substance.

The things in my future are not yet, and only my fretting over possibilities is gnawing at me. They are not yet, while it is just my own thinking that is giving them substance.

The things right now are certainly in front of me, but are they really as imposing as I make them out to be? If I am completely honest with myself, how are they so insurmountable? It is not the situation in itself that threatens me, but only my fear, my longing, my confusion, my insecurity, my nervousness. Those are all from me, and I can put them in their place.

Does my circumstance, however big or small, still allow me the choice to act with virtue, to practice justice, to show compassion, to still do right by myself in the face of something wrong? I must admit that it invariably does. I am the biggest obstacle to that.

Once I know how much of what is unnecessary I have added to the mix, how much baggage I don’t need to be carrying, what seemed so big is actually quite small. It doesn’t take superhuman strength or any brute willpower. The courage to change myself comes only from the simplicity of knowing that only I can harm myself.

I made the dread and horror, so I can also unmake it. 

Written in 4/2008