What
is my ruling faculty now to me? And of what nature am I now making it? And for
what purpose am I now using it?
Is
it void of understanding? Is it loosed and rent asunder from social life? Is it
melted into and mixed with the poor flesh so as to move together with it?
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 10.24 (tr
Long)
I had a teacher who liked to joke
that for a species that calls itself homo
sapiens, we don’t seem to do a whole lot of thinking, and when we do, it is
usually ruled by something else. I chuckled every time, but most of the people
around me looked puzzled.
It may seem odd that we are given
the power of reason and then choose not to use it well, but of course that very
decision to abuse free judgment is itself a free judgment.
It is within the very nature of man
to understand himself and his world, and he is therefore also quite able to
turn his back on understanding himself and his world. Give a being a mind, by
which it can act from its own awareness, and you have also given it a will, by
which it can prefer not to be mindful.
Instead of the mind and the will
directing the body and the passions, we often allow the body and the passions
to dominate the mind and the will. Ironically, we choose not to choose for
ourselves, and we thereby freely make ourselves slaves to our circumstances.
I am often saddened when I see how we
neglect the power of our own minds, not because we are failing to be clever and
witty academics, but rather because we are abandoning our very humanity. Notice
how often we are tempted to only feel without reflection, to decide without a
measure of meaning, or to act without a sense of greater purpose. We can leave
the scholarship to the scholars, but we need to keep a hold of that which makes
us different from the beasts.
So I make a deliberate choice, each
and every morning when I wake, to remind myself that I am not defined by the
strength of my body, or by the weight of my emotions, or by the breadth of my
possessions, or by how much I can buy or sell.
I am not formed by what happens to
me, or by how I appear, or by what titles and labels I give myself, or by
whether I meet with the approval or disapproval of others.
I am rather defined by my ability to
know and to love, to find happiness in what is true and good, to live simply
for the sake of living with virtue, and to respect my place within the greater
good of Nature.
I am formed by what I choose to
think and do, by the power of my conscience, by the divine spark within me, and
by my willingness to recognize that same divine spark in my neighbor.
All the rest is quite unimportant.
The worth of my day will depend upon the depth of my commitment to these
values.
Written in 2/2009
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