Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.33

To look for the fig in winter is a madman's act. Such is he who looks for his child when it is no longer allowed.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 11.33 (tr Long)

Marcus Aurelius here begins to offer a number of observations by Epictetus. Now some Stoic sayings can sound quite harsh to a sensitive soul, or to someone who is unfamiliar with their deeper moral context, and Epictetus may sometimes come across as especially rude. This passage is a perfect example.

It seemed heartless to me when I first read it as a young man, and it seemed downright brutal to me when I read it again as an older man, after I had lost a child. I felt offended that someone would dare to tell me what I was or was not allowed to look for!

I was free to look for whatever I wanted, of course, but my mistake was in somehow thinking that the way of the world would stop and start according to my whims. Just as I will come and go, so all the things of this life are made to come and go; I have my time and place, and they have their time and place. What vanity to think that they are there to serve me, to be there only when I want them.

I may say I have “lost” many people, places, and conditions that I preferred, but they were hardly mine to begin with. For the time they were in my presence, they hardly made me any better, even as I could choose to make myself better through them. Once they are gone, any regret I may have is about my failure to do right while they were still here. Let me then improve myself as I face a new circumstance, and not bemoan the absence of the old.

A loved one is gone. Perhaps he has died, perhaps she has turned away, perhaps he is beyond my reach. Opportunity gave me a moment, however brief, to offer love. Did I take it? What held me back? What can I learn about being a better man here and now, having experienced that ebb and flow of the world? I must learn to embrace what is, not what is not.

“But there is nothing else left!” There is always so much left, more than I may be willing to admit.

I always seem to want strawberries the most when they are out of season. The trick should be enjoying them all the more fully when they are in season.

Written in 7/2009