Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.4

Have I done something for the general interest? Well then, I have had my reward. Let this always be present to your mind, and never stop doing such good.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 11.4 (tr Long)

I have made many mistakes concerning the people I admire and trust. I have too often been enticed by fine words and a pleasant presentation, and I have too often overlooked those who simply act with conviction and character, never making a peep about how important they are. Even if my thinking was slowly improving, my doing was lagging quite far behind.

I now see, just a bit more clearly, that good people will genuinely act for the sake of others, and that they will ask for no further reward beyond that. The satisfaction of their conscience is all they seek.

I also begin to recognize where I was going wrong. There are rather clear warning signs for players and scoundrels. Everything they say and do always seems to point back to glorifying themselves, and they always demand some further compensation for their seeming decency. At that point, of course, it ceases to be decency at all; it becomes a mercenary life.

The common good, or the “general interest”, is not merely some abstract idea. It is a concrete commitment. It requires seeing that the good of any one piece can never be at the expense of any other, and that we all rise and fall together.

It brings out the young romantic in me, whose eyes got a bit teary when he first read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, where Father Zosima says: “Every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men.”

It brings out the old Thomist in me, who still recites to himself that phrase from the manuals: “A man may suffer an evil, but he must never commit an evil.”

Many people have long told me that success in life requires balancing priorities, finding compromises, and seizing opportunities. That indeed sounds noble, until one grasps that it all really depends on our order of what is more or less important, what things we surrender in order to gain other things, and where we find what is useful.

To prioritize virtue over vice is quite good, but to prioritize profit over principle is quite evil. To compromise my preferences for my character is worthy of credit, but to compromise my character for convenience is worthy of blame. To take advantage of the chance to be fair is right, but to take advantage of the chance to play the tyrant is wrong.

I leave little reminders for myself everywhere I can, like a trail of breadcrumbs, to be clear about what I really want, and why I might want it.

Written in 4/2009