Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.34

To him who is penetrated by true principles even the briefest precept is sufficient, and any common precept, to remind him that he should be free from grief and fear. For example:

"Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground—

So is the race of men."

Leaves, also, are your children; and leaves, too, are they who cry out as if they were worthy of credit and bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer; and leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man's fame to after-times.

For all such things as these "are produced in the season of spring," as the poet says; then the wind casts them down; then the forest produces other leaves in their places.

But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet you avoid and pursue all things as if they would be eternal. A little time, and you shall close your eyes; and him who has attended you to your grave another soon will lament.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 10.34 (tr Long)

I have often made use of many different clever expressions, or lines of poetry, or words from a song to help me along my way. For many years, I would recite bits of Rudyard Kipling’s “If—“ to myself whenever I felt discouraged by this whole life seeming wasted:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,

And treat those two impostors just the same . . .

I once worked with a woman, very kind and unassuming, who had a quirky and inspiring personal habit. It took me many months to really figure out what she was even doing, because she did it so quietly. Whenever she felt anxious or frustrated, she would softly whistle the tune to “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas:

Now, don't hang on,

Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.

It slips away,

And all your money won't another minute buy.

My own family, as I often recount, would of course regularly say things like “they already have their reward,” or “this too shall pass,” or “the pendulum swings”, or “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

There’s a perfectly good reason there are so many sayings to help us remember that life is fragile and fleeting, precisely because we need to be reminded of this fact again and again, whenever we make the forces in the world too big, or whenever we make ourselves too big. We need to regain a proper perspective, whenever we confuse something that comes and goes in an instant with something that lasts forever.

The words can be as noble as those of Homer, or they can be as mundane as those of Bill Murray in Meatballs: “It just doesn’t matter!” They can be a ready aid in not being intimidated by the posturing of self-important people, and a ready cure for not becoming that way within ourselves.

One of things I miss the most from my old home up in Boston is the weather. Yes, that gets a good laugh every time, because who would want all of that craziness? I actually appreciated at least some of that craziness, in that well-defined seasons can provide a reassurance that however much I like or dislike something, it will be different tomorrow. New will replace old, and the new will in turn likewise become old. It all comes around again.

The leaves changing color, and then falling, and then being swept about by the wind were especially beautiful. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was terrible natural disaster, where everything ended up freezing and dying.

And yet it started all over again. If I can only attend to this rightly, the changes of the seasons themselves can speak to me like some comforting lines of poetry.

Written in 3/2009