"The
earth loves the rain;" and "the solemn ether loves;" and the
Universe loves to make whatever is about to be.
I
say then to the Universe, that I love as you love. And is not this too said
that what "this or that loves is wont to be produced?"
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 10.21 (tr
Long)
Sometimes I want to experience a
change, because I am somehow convinced that it will be better for me. I desire
something new, because I am tired or disappointed with what is old.
Sometimes I resist any change at all,
because I am somehow comfortable that what I now have is better for me. I cling
to what is old, because I fear the possibility of what is new.
They say that liberals want to start
all over again, and that conservatives want to keep it all the same. I have
never succumbed to either extreme, but I have always appreciated the old joke,
that some people want to continue with the same old mistakes, while other
people want to replace them with entirely new ones.
Yet I think that the Stoic, and any
man who respects Nature for her own sake, will also respect change for its own
sake, as an expression of the very ebb and flow of things. It should hardly
matter to me at all whether a change improves or degrades my circumstances; not
any one circumstance, new or old, is either of benefit or of harm to me. The
old and the new should both be indifferent in my estimation; the content of my
character is what should matter to me.
The mistakes don’t come from things
changing or not changing, but from my own choice to be virtuous or vicious.
Through it all, Nature delights in
all sorts of change, and as soon as one state has come to be, it will flow into
another. Let me not love what I happen to prefer above all else, but let me
love what Providence intends, knowing full well that constant action and
reaction, unending transformation, is the order of all being.
There is no possibility of keeping
it in this way, or of improving it in another way. What it was, and what it
will be, necessarily go together. One requires the other, and one proceeds from
the other.
“I want to keep it this way.” Well,
I can’t, because nothing in creation stays the same. Life is a process, not a
state.
“I want it to be another way.” Well,
it will be, but it won’t stay that way. Life is a process, not a state.
Thank you
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