Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.28.2

. . . Soon will the earth cover us all.

Then the earth, too, will change, and the things also that result from change will continue to change forever, and these again forever.

For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations that follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything that is perishable.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.28 (tr Long)

One may leave open, for the moment, the question of exactly why the Universe operates as it does. I could imagine a state of affairs where God orders things either directly or indirectly, or where the forces of different elements play off of one another, or even where things seem to come about for no immediately clear or discernible reason at all.

But what I cannot avoid is recognizing how all creatures are always in action and subject to change. They do so according to constant cycles of generation and destruction, of birth, life, death, and then rebirth once more, of one thing passing into yet another thing. A poetic friend of mine once described it as being in awe that there is no beginning or ending to beginnings or endings.

Now I could be saddened that nothing stays the same, that everything is rebuilt into something else, or I could embrace the fact that the very possibility of living itself is inherently a process, and that wherever there is activity there will be coming and going. Like a good journey, each stop and each moment can be enjoyed fully in their own way, understanding also that tomorrow one will be someplace else, and also someone else.

To know that life is an unfolding, and not a static state, can allow me to fully appreciate each opportunity that is given, to not put off what should be done now, and to accept the many stages of life in a proper perspective. It helps me to distinguish between the part and the whole, and to view each changing aspect as an expression of all of Nature.

At the same time, an awareness of change warns me to not depend upon any one thing too much, knowing that each is nothing at all on its own, and will never provide anything lasting. Any one thing only makes sense within the context of all things, just as I only make sense in relationship to what I came out of, and to what I will return.

Despising may sound like a rather strong word, but yes, I must even take that attitude of never loving any corruptible thing merely for or in itself, precisely because it is nothing for or in itself.

Every particular nature has its role in Universal Nature. My particular nature, as a rational animal, is to freely choose to live with virtue for whatever time I may live, in whatever circumstances I may live. That doesn’t make me everything, and it doesn’t make me permanent, but it gives me far more than I will ever need to be happy. 

Written in 11/2008