Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.24

Quarrels of little children and their sports, and poor spirits carrying about dead bodies, such is everything; and so what is exhibited in the representation of the mansions of the dead strikes our eyes more clearly.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.24 (tr Long)

If we learn to turn our attention away from what is lesser, it can surely help us take better notice of what is greater. Things can loom large in the imagination, and unless we choose to look through them and beyond them, we will find ourselves distracted from what is good in life, by nothing more than shadows and illusions.

How important have all the glittering prizes really been? Was the fame worth the flattery? Was the pleasure worth the playing? Were the profits worth the friendships sold? Did the worldly gains outweigh the moral losses?

These are the uncomfortable questions we all eventually have to ask ourselves. If we look at ourselves honestly, we will find the answers disturbing.

A sense of perspective will make all of the difference. Look at the inside, not at the outside. Look to the whole, not to the part. Look for the ultimate, not for the proximate.

Someone once told me not to be afraid of speaking in public, and suggested I imagine my audience in their underwear. That never worked for me, because I only started laughing uncontrollably. Yet perhaps it did work after all.

I honestly don’t know what Marcus Aurelius intends by mentioning the mansions of the dead, but I think of that classical image, of the hero entering the underworld, only to encounter the shades of those passed. They are now nothing at all, and they are still concerned with what goes about in a world completely lost to them.

I am gone, but I’m worried about whether I turned off the stove. Shadows obsessed with shadows.

I think of the Egyptian pharaohs, stacking their tombs with riches. There is nothing there for them to enjoy, because they are no more. 

I think of an old abandoned Victorian house, on the path I would walk home from school. I was horrified by it, certain that it was haunted. That haunting, however, was only in my mind. People had lived there, and people had died there. It was the thought that bothered me, not the reality. What I feared did not exist at all.

They tore that old house down one day, and built a new one for the yuppies.

The supposed problems I see in my life are nothing more than the bickering of children. Growing up isn’t about being more important, but about being better. Understanding the difference is what matters. 

Written in 11/2008