Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.15

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