The reflections that I employ for
my own benefit so as not to be irked by exile, I should like to repeat to you.
It seems to me that exile does
not strip a man entirely, not even of the things which the average man calls
goods, as I have just shown. But if he is deprived of some or all of them, he
is still not deprived of the things which are truly goods.
Certainly the exile is not
prevented from possessing courage and justice simply because he is banished,
nor self-control, nor understanding, nor any of the other virtues which when
present serve to bring honor and benefit to a man and show him to be
praiseworthy and of good repute, but when absent, serve to cause him harm and dishonor
and show him to be wicked and of ill-repute.
Since this is true, if you are
that good man and have his virtues, exile will not harm or degrade you, because
the virtues are present in you which are most able to help and to sustain you.
But if you are bad, it is the evil that harms you and not exile; and the misery
you feel in exile is the product of evil, not of exile. It is from this you
must hasten to secure release rather than from exile.
On my bad days, I am tempted to feel a resentment toward
those who are so proud to offer empty advice. Sometimes they insist that they
can provide the rules of success and happiness, even as they speak nothing
about Nature, and offer no measure of right and wrong. At other times they tell
me all about how the world really works, though they are quite oblivious to the
immediate circumstances that most people must face.
But why grow angry at them for what they don’t
know? I recall that whenever I am terribly mistaken, no amount of condemnation has
ever helped me. Encouragement has helped me, compassion has helped me, being
taught by example has helped me.
I am accordingly grateful for the advice of Musonius,
so different from most any of the advice I have heard before. I obviously never
met the man, but from what he tells me, I suspect that I can trust him.
He shows me that he has a moral compass, that he
views the worth or our lives through the characteristics that define us as
human, the powers of reason and choice. He also shows me that he is grounded in
the real world, that he is acutely aware of the struggles of everyday living. His
theory and his practice fit together, and he points straight to the simple essence
of human happiness.
So concerned that my contentment must rely upon the
things that happen to me, I will worry that any sort of hardship, like poverty,
or disease, or the exile discussed in this lecture, will make it impossible for
me to live a good life. It may seem so obvious, but I will still neglect to
address the critical questions: what really is good for me, and what place do
my circumstances play in that good?
Musonius first reminds me that some changes in my situation
might be drastic, but this does not mean that they will necessarily reduce my
fortune. I may lose some worldly possessions, but I may also gain others, and
my own resourcefulness and self-reliance will make the biggest difference.
Events are never good and bad in themselves, but become good or bad by how I
learn to use them as an opportunity.
Yet given that so many of my conditions are ultimately
beyond my power, what am I to do when they stubbornly refuse to conform to my
preferences? Here is where Musonius offers his second, and more fundamental, point:
it will hardly matter if I lose what I prefer, because that is not what will
make or break me.
Nothing can stop me from practicing the virtues,
from being understanding, brave, temperate, and just, and so nothing can infringe
on what defines my very humanity. Whether the externals come or go, their value
depends entirely on the content of my character. Wealth will not make a wicked
man good, just as poverty will not make a good man wicked.
What is lower becomes worthy through its conformity
to the higher, and so my circumstances do not make something of me, but I make
something of my circumstances.
I have a vivid memory from childhood of seeing a
painting of Napoleon, on board a ship taking him into final exile on St.
Helena. I was only a pup, but I gazed at it for quite some time, and I wondered
what that man was thinking, and whether the British officers behind him were
being curious or contemptuous.
How must it have felt for Napoleon to lose
everything he had worked for? You may think of him as a hero or as a villain,
or as someone in between, but the entire scene just screams of loss.
I have faced my own losses as the years passed by,
and while I have never been sent to a rock in the middle of the Atlantic, I
have seen people I love turn away, and things I desire kept from me. There were
many times I thought I could no longer bear it. And then some basic insights
about life started to turn it all around for me.
Losing persons, places, or things wasn’t the issue
at all, since they were not mine to lose. Losing myself was the issue, and that
was entirely up to me.
How would Napoleon have taken to such advice? Could
he still have learned to revere the beauty of his own soul, instead of the
glory of an empire?
Written in 12/2016
IMAGE: William Orchardson, Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon (1880)
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