Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.26

When you are troubled about anything, you have forgotten this, that all things happen according to the Universal Nature;

and forgotten this, that a man's wrongful act is nothing to you;

and further you have forgotten this, that everything that happens, always happened so and will happen so, and now happens so everywhere;

forgotten this too, how close is the kinship between a man and the whole human race, for it is a community, not of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence.

And you have forgotten this too, that every man's intelligence is a god and is an efflux of the Deity;

and forgotten this, that nothing is a man's own, but that his child and his body and his very soul came from the Deity;

forgotten this, that everything is opinion;

and lastly you have forgotten that every man lives the present time only, and loses only this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.26 (tr Long)

I am as tempted to cherry picking as anyone else, all the more so when it comes to matters of meaning and value. I may remember what I find convenient, and forget what I find inconvenient. In doing so, by stressing one part at the expense of the whole, I am confusing truth with preference.

When I am “forgetting” in this way, it comes from deliberately looking away, from failing to apply the good practice of thinking. Through such neglect, the pieces are scattered, and no longer make any sense in relationship to one another. I am thinking of myself in opposition to the world, and not in harmony with the world.

Stoicism works as a complete system, because it follows from a model of Universal Nature. There can be all sorts of ways to summarize the basic principles of Stoic ethics, for example, but I will often return to this passage from Marcus Aurelius, especially when my memory has been too selective.

I may have my own particular wording, but I try to recall the same lessons:

All things act together, each for its own reason, under the design of Providence.

The way another may do wrong must never hinder me from doing right.

Whatever is taking place for me now is a process shared with everyone and everything else, past, present, and future.

I am never alone, because I possess the very same human nature as all of my fellows, every single one, and we are all ordered to the same good.

As a creature of mind, I participate in the very Mind that gives all meaning and purpose.

I am nothing in and of myself, but everything by working with and through the whole.

What is good or bad for my own life, what makes me happy or miserable within that whole, will be formed by my own judgment, not merely by what happens to me.

The merit of my life is mine to determine at this moment, free from the weight of what has been, or by the fear of what will be. 

Written in 9/2009