Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.21

"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.

Do not fix it in amber. The rain will fall, and the Universe will always be moving. If I decide to love what Nature loves, I will embrace that with all of my heart and mind, happy to see things unfolding as they should. In this manner, I will know my place.

Written in 2/2009