Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.52

Neither in your actions be sluggish, nor in your conversation without method, nor wandering in your thoughts, nor let there be in your soul inward contention or external effusion, nor in life be so busy as to have no leisure.

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

When I am being prideful, this seems like totally unnecessary advice. Of course I should be active, thoughtful, committed, in harmony with myself and my world, and taking the time to smell the roses. What fool would think that this isn’t the right way to go?

And yet I will fail to do any of this, time and time again, because I am not living my own life, but coasting through my own life.

Yes, I suspect you know that you’ve done it as well, and far more often than you’d like to admit.

It may somehow seem easier, or more convenient, to just shut myself off, and to let others make my decisions for me. I don’t even require any particular person telling me what to do, since it is enough to just go with the general flow of fashion and power.

Get a fancy degree? Make money? Look important? Pose for the photographs? Say all the right things, while doing absolutely nothing? Check.

I observe how we all say that we are so busy in our lives, and I will reflect on how the worldly needs of life are so much easier than they have ever been, but yet we say that we have no time at all for anything else. We obsess about the deadlines at work, paying the bills, the cocktail parties, trucking the children from one pampered activity to another, and above all else, making ourselves look like we are so very brilliant. Is that actually being busy, or is it busywork?

I am getting busy with all the wrong things. I am doing much, but I understand less. I look to what is around me, while I neglect what is within me.

I need to put my priorities in order, and dedicate myself to all the right things. When I am busy with the good life, rightly understood, I will actually find the leisure to rest in genuine joy and contentment.

Living with justice and compassion actually takes very little time, and can become almost effortless with the right frame of mind. The habits of virtue take care of themselves, if only we choose to love the right things in this world.

Once I manage all of the essentials, that will leave me so much of an opportunity to savor all the rest of life. No, the essentials are not fame and fortune. All that is essential is living in truth and love.

If I am too busy to be thoughtful, brave, moderate, or fair, I’m in the wrong business. If I do not have time to love my friends, where has my time truly gone?

Written in 5/2008