Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.5

Whatever may happen to you, it was prepared for you from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of your being, and of that which is incidental to it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 10.5 (tr Long)

I must always be careful not to put the cart before the horse. Simply because I may prefer something, will not not make it true, and simply because it may be convenient for my desires at the moment, will not make it right.

The danger is that I might begin with a conclusion, and then concoct an imaginary argument to justify it; I will start with what I want, and confuse it with what I need. I ought to remember that reasoning is quite different from rationalizing.

There have been times when I have felt more comfortable living in a world of inherent order and purpose, and there are times when I have longed for a world of aimless chance. This comes from my mood, however, and not from any sort of wisdom; it describes my passions, loosed from my understanding.

Even as my feelings will change, I struggle to maintain a sense of reason, and over many years of grappling with the way things work, I cannot bring myself to embrace the primacy of chaos and disorder.

This is because, in my mind, the very first principles of logic, of identity, of non-contradiction, and of the excluded middle, demand that something is what it is, that it cannot be its opposite, and that it either is or it isn’t. To claim otherwise is to argue for what is literally impossible. The necessity of causality, that every effect requires a cause, and that something cannot come from nothing, follows from these principles.

If it has happened, it has happened for a reason. If there is reason within the parts, there is also reason within the whole. I face these facts in the big picture, knowing that there is the ultimate rule of Providence, and I face these facts in the small picture, knowing that nothing of daily life occurs in vain.

I see things that seem random, but that is only in my limited perception, because I am not fully able to discern the causes right then and there. As the days pass on and on, and as I get closer to my own end, I am still acutely aware that there are much greater ends.

My own freedom, or that of any other rational creature, is not separate from that design, but already included within that design, for the agency of each aspect participates in the agency of all that is.

Each thread is spun as a part of the greater weave, and there is no weave without the weaver. It may not always be what I like, though it is my task to find a harmony between what I like and what must be.

Written in 1/2009