Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.24

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