Short is the little that remains to you of life. Live as on
a mountain. For it makes no difference whether a man lives there or here, if he
lives everywhere in the world as in a social state.
Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to
Nature.
If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is
better than to live thus as men do.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 10.15 (tr
Long)
Over the years,
I have seen many people treating a philosophy, a spiritual tradition, or any deeper
way of life as a merely cosmetic modification. I was already quite familiar
with this from so many churches, where people embraced the word but not the
task, so I should not have been surprised when I also found it in the practice
of Stoicism.
Instead of
helping us to transform our very values to the core, we too easily continue pursuing
all the same old things, the wealth, the fame, or the pleasure, and we assume
that a new theory will simply provide new tools for getting what we already
wanted. So Stoicism can now become a life hack for profit in business, or
professional success, or improving our social status.
I know that I
am in quite the minority here, but I have long thought that Stoicism needs to
go far deeper than that.
It requires, I
suggest, redefining who I am, what it means for me to be happy, and how all the
pieces of this world are made to work together, such that what I call the Stoic
Turn involves a total change in my goals and priorities. I don’t think that
anyone who genuinely engages Stoicism, or any fundamental wisdom about life for
that matter, will ever really be the same person again.
Once I have
embraced virtue as the highest human good, the only complete human good upon
which all other things depend, I will strive to be wise, brave, temperate, and
just first and foremost, quite indifferent to whether I also happen to be rich,
safe, gratified, or powerful.
I will do my
best to treat others with compassion and respect, not merely as a means for my
own end. To be a social animal will not be about getting invited to the best
parties, but about recognizing that I am called to living in harmony with my
neighbor.
It won’t really
make any difference under what circumstances I live, as long as I am committed
to the character of how well I live. Then I do not need to be important or
influential to make a difference, because the reward of practicing a life
according to Nature will be more than enough, and will be the greatest example
to others.
What a
beautiful and radical idea, that simply being human is the greatest human
achievement!
Will this make
some people quite uncomfortable? Indeed it will, and I should not be surprised
at how far some people will go to keep us from living our own lives. They do
this, I suspect, because they would like to live our lives for us.
I should not
let this discourage me. If they seek to harm me, or even destroy me, it is
better that I endure their injustices than becoming unjust myself, better to
die than to choose to live as they do.
If I can manage
to think this way, and to live this way, I will have managed to rebuild myself
completely, in substance and not just in appearance, and I will not fear losing
what I know is accidental to myself.
Written in 1/2009
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