Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.27

Constantly consider how all things such as they now are, in time past also were; and consider that they will be the same again.

And place before your eyes entire dramas and stages of the same form, whatever you have learned from your experience or from older history: for example, the whole court of Hadrianus, and the whole court of Antoninus, and the whole court of Philippus, Alexander, Croesus.

For all those were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 10.27 (tr Long)

It is helpful to remember that even as things are always in motion, they will follow the same pattern, the same cycle; each instance, in whatever time, place, or circumstance, will reflect a common and binding order.

Whether it is from the past or in the present, under one set of accidents or another, or viewed from this or that cultural perspective, Nature expresses herself according to a shared design. Good men remain good men for the same reasons, and vicious men remain vicious men for the same reasons; their thinking and actions will follow a certain form. Deception still flies in the face of honesty, selfishness still clashes with fairness, and hatred still opposes love. The trends of the hour pass, and yet character stands firm.

This is one reason why both our own personal experiences and the greater flow of human history have so much to teach us. Quite similar motives, conflicts, and resolutions will play themselves out, over and over. When time is joined to insight, we can begin to see how the more it is different, the more it stays the same.

It is hardly that being old, or having read many books, will necessarily make us wise, even as age and learning can be of great assistance in becoming wise. Literature, and drama, and all forms of art can also help us do much the same, because they point to universal truths of the human condition. History may seem to be dead and obsolete, and a poem or a play may appear stale and stuffy, but behind the unfamiliar first impressions we discover a mirroring of our own faces.

I have heard foolish people, both young and old, insist that they are interested only in the now, and only in their own concerns, while I have heard wise people, both young and old, recognize that the now is only intelligible through the then, and their own concerns are only meaningful through those of others.

While some see only the change itself, others discern the foundations beneath the change. Only the faces and the settings will vary, as the twists and turns of the plot remain remarkably familiar.

I have been most gratified as a teacher when a young person suddenly says something like “Why are we still as stubborn as Achilles?” or “I can relate to how guilt is eating away at Raskolnikov!” or “You’re just a regular Atticus Finch, aren’t you?” It shows me that they are starting to bring it all together, to find that common thread of right and wrong.

Written in 3/2009