Enough of this wretched life, and murmuring, and apish
tricks. Why are you disturbed?
What is there new in this? What unsettles you? Is it the
form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it.
But besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods then,
now become at last more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine
these things for a hundred years or three.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.37 (tr
Long)
I notice quite
often how people like to insist that they are so very happy, yet they still regularly
clench their jaws in frustration, or bicker with their neighbors, or sit there
during a conversation while ripping up ever-smaller pieces of paper. There is lots
of aggression, resentment, and scheming, and I wonder how that could possibly
be happiness.
So much of it
involves playing a role when people are looking, and then thrashing about when
we think no one is really looking. It is the cult of appearances, the
substitution of outward posturing for inner peace.
I know it quite
well, because I’ve done it myself. I feel miserable, I complain all of the
time, and then I play the part of some trained animal doing a clever
performance to win some tasty treats. I may curse the boss, but I still beg
like a dog, forcing myself to wag my tail, whenever he casts his glance my way.
What is truly
bothering me? The fact that I am not myself, but rather allowing myself to be
ruled by images. I lie to myself, and to others, and say that all is fine; but
it isn’t fine, because I have a hole in my heart.
What is it that
entrances me? The vanity of the outsides, and the neglect of the insides. I
must look more closely. It is all made of gross matter, put together for this
moment in a temporary form.
Why should that
frighten me? It shouldn’t. They are all just things, each one no more
impressive than any other. Their power is in how I think about them, never in what
they actually are.
Be simple and
be better. These two go together. Simplicity is not about having less, but
about being more through wanting less. Being better is not about lording it
over others, but about seeing myself within others, and others within myself.
It is time to
stop being a mimicking ape, and to become a man who rules. I need not rule anything,
however, beyond myself. That is enough. That fact won’t change, however long I
fret over it.
Written in 12/2008
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