For
instance, if a man should stand by a clear pure spring, and curse it, the
spring never ceases sending up potable water. And if he should cast clay into
it or filth, it will speedily disperse them and wash them out, and will not be
at all polluted.
How
then shalt you possess a perpetual fountain and not a mere well? By forming
yourself hourly to freedom conjoined with contentment, simplicity, and modesty.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8 (tr
Long)
The harm that
others can do to me will only depend upon my own estimation of what it means to
be harmed. Many things can be given, and many things can be taken away, but if I
understand that the purity of my own thoughts and choices can always be my own,
what real harm can befall me?
I adore this
image of spring water. Throw dirt in it, and it will slowly but surely clear
itself. Try to block its flow, and it will with patient force arise somewhere
else. Man may do what he wills to Nature, but Nature always finds her own way,
confounding the ways of men. What has been poisoned will always end up cleansed.
I have another
image that helps me to grasp this point for myself. When I was very young, my
parents bought a home in a new neighborhood. A move isn’t always easy for a
child, and there was much that I missed from our old humble apartment. Still,
my mother would try to get me interested in all the exciting things around us.
There was a park a block away. We explored it inch by inch together, only to
find a huge section of an old aqueduct covered in wild raspberry plants.
As summers came
around, we took our buckets and harvested our feast of fruit. Few things ever
tasted as sweet.
Some years
later, I was horrified one day to find that someone had cleared that land,
right down to the dirt. Perhaps a neighbor complained to the Parks Department
about all of the ugly overgrown weeds? The raspberries were gone. I couldn’t
tell any of my tough friends about my loss, but my mother understood.
But it wasn’t
over. Another few years along, now a sullen teenager, I sat myself down on the
slope of that same aqueduct. It was again full of all kinds of plants. I was by
this point full of piss and vinegar. The world didn’t seem to be going my way,
and when you’re young, that’s all that seems to matter.
And right there
next to me was a raspberry bush, not as big as the ones I remembered from
before, but still laden with ripe fruit. I think I must have had an allergy attack,
because I got a bit teary; there was clearly no other explanation. I gathered a
few of the berries, and brought them home. My mother and I ate them with a bit
of powdered sugar. She might not remember, but I certainly do.
Many more years
after that, someone I had allowed to hurt me very deeply decided to buy a
house, right by where those raspberries could still be found. What comes around
goes around. I can’t bring myself to go home anymore now, but I still fondly remember
the raspberries.
The water will
become clear. All the things that grow on this Earth find their way back to
where they belong. Everything is in it place, even if it doesn’t seem so at the
time.
A mind content
with itself, depending upon nothing beyond the good it may find within its own
convictions, will be pushed this way and that. Yet it can remain fully itself,
flowing as it should, growing right back as it should, regardless of all the
polluting and clearing others may attempt.
Written in 11/2016
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