Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.13

How ridiculous and what a stranger he is who is surprised at anything that happens in life.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.13 (tr Long)

Some people like to get angry, and some people like to be offended, and some people like to feel outraged. A few years back, a colleague stormed into my office, threw down an open book, and pointed excitedly at a photograph on the page.

“See? See? That’s what happens when whites, males, Christians, and fascists are allowed to run things! You should be ashamed!”

I looked down at the picture. I had seen it before, and I have seen many hundreds like it.

“Aren’t you shocked by this? Did you ever think something like this could really happen? On your watch? From your people?”

No, I was not shocked by it, and yes, I had always known that things like this happen. They happen all the time.

The photograph was from the early 1900’s, of a forced laborer, essentially a slave, in the Belgian Congo. He sits there, looking down at the severed hand and foot of his butchered daughter. The story has it that this was a punishment from his overseers for not meeting his harvest quota.

Is this horrific, vicious, and barbaric? Yes. Is it that uncommon? No. That people can be brutal is never an excuse, but it is hardly a rare thing in this world.

Am I moved to the deepest sympathy, even to tears, by such a sight? Yes. Am I surprised by it? No. Human nature will go from the highest highs to the lowest lows.

Where have you been not to know this? Why do you further assume it must be the act of one class or another, instead of seeing it as a weakness we all share, each and every one of us, regardless of our race, culture, or creed? Give a man freedom, and give him some power, and he can make the absolute best of it, or the absolute worst of it.

I am grateful I did not live at that time or in that place, though my own time and place have shown me so much that is very similar. The injustices may differ in degree, or they may take on different forms, or they may attack either the body or the spirit, but they are really no different in kind.

I once stood by helpless as a bunch of boys pinned down the arm of a crying victim, and one of them repeatedly pounded that arm with a baseball bat.

I once knew a girl who hung herself in her dorm room, after years of being mocked, ridiculed, and shunned by her peers.

I once stumbled across an important priest, raping a young boy in a bathroom stall.

I once quivered, shaking with rage, when I overheard a fancy doctor speak about my dead son: “Thank God we’re rid of that one!”

There is much indifference, hatred, and abuse in this world. I know this simply because I too am human. It does not surprise me.

There is also so much concern, love, and justice in this world. I know this simply because I too am human. It does not surprise me.

Yet as soon as I insist on attacking my perceived group of enemies, then I too choose indifference, hatred, and abuse, instead of choosing concern, love, and justice.

I choose not to be surprised by either good or evil, and I choose not to become indignant. It is within each of us, individually, to decide by what measures we will live. That is as perennial as the grass.

Written in 8/2009