Do
not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those
things that Nature wills. For such as it is to be young and to grow old, and to
increase and to reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and gray hairs, and
to beget and to be pregnant and to bring forth, and all the other natural
operations that the seasons of your life bring, such also is dissolution.
This,
then, is consistent with the character of a reflecting man—to be neither
careless nor impatient nor contemptuous with respect to death, but to wait for it
as one of the operations of Nature. As you now wait for the time when the child
shall come out of your wife's womb, so be ready for the time when your soul
shall fall out of this envelope.
But
if you require also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach your heart, you
will be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which you
are going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom your soul will no
longer be mingled.
For
it is no way right to be offended with men, but it is your duty to care for
them and to bear with them gently; and yet to remember that your departure will
not be from men who have the same principles as yourself.
For
this is the only thing, if there be any, that could draw us the contrary way and
attach us to life—to be permitted to live with those who have the same
principles as ourselves. But now you see how great is the trouble arising from
the discordance of those who live together, so that you may say, “Come quick, O
death, lest perchance I, too, should forget myself.”
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.3 (tr
Long)
Stoicism
reminds me to always carefully examine my own thinking, to be aware of the
habits that influence how I act, to reflect upon the meaning of what I am
feeling. If I am to understand that my happiness will proceed not merely from
my circumstances, but from my estimation of circumstances, such introspection
is absolutely essential.
The way of the
world encourages me to constantly direct my attention outward, at what I can
win and acquire out there, but Stoicism is hardly a philosophy that follows the
way of the world. The success I am told I must achieve is not the contentment I
need.
And when I look
inward, I will sometimes come across powerful assumptions I may not even have
been entirely aware of, misleading beliefs that hold far more power over me
than I am willing to admit.
An illusion I have
carried with me for some time, and that I must regularly put in its place, is a
desire to go back to a past stage of my life, to do it over again, or to jump
ahead to a later stage in life, to move along to a better place. When I was
younger, I sometimes wanted to be older, and now that I am older, I sometimes
want to be younger. All of it arises from a sense that something was wasted, or
that something remains to be done.
This will fill
me with feelings of doubt, of regret, of anxiety, of resentment. The way I can
overcome this is to remember that where I am right now, in whatever situation I
find myself, is exactly where I am supposed to be right now. I must live each
stage of my life, however long or short it may be, for its own sake, joyfully
accepting that it is beautiful and fitting. To regret the past, or worry for
the future, is to foolishly neglect what should be done at this very moment.
Each season of
the year, and each age of man, has its rightful place, no one better or worse
than the other. This is especially true of facing death, that monstrous beast
of all anxieties, that final point where there can be no more clutching at the
desperate chance to do it over. It doesn’t need to be done over at all, because
everything that passes transforms into something new.
I don’t just
need to bear this begrudgingly, but I can embrace it wholeheartedly.
If I still have
my doubts, and I need a more base motivation to accept where I am, I can also
see how all the things I want to hold on to are not really as pleasant as I may
think they are.
I am here to
love my neighbor, to help him carry his burden, and to let him know that he is
not alone. But quite often my neighbor will not be thinking along the same
lines. He will mock me, abuse me, or reject me. Let me do right by him, while
also realizing that he will often not do right by me. That is hardly something
I should be afraid of leaving behind, now is it?
Each season of
the year has its own purpose, and should be appreciated for its own sake, though
that does not mean I won’t be happy to leave behind the biting cold of winter,
or the scorching heat of summer.
Written in 7/2008
IMAGE: Araki Jippo, Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons (1917)
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