The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 11.5


Tell me, do you think it is more fitting for a free man by his own labor to procure for himself the necessities of life or to receive them from others? But surely it is plain that not to require another's help for one's need is more dignified than asking for it.

If all this profound talk about a unity with Nature is still too strange for me, then I can also look to another benefit that comes from living close to the land: where else might I find such a great degree of self-reliance and freedom?

Stoicism argues that we become better and happier the more we take responsibility for ourselves, and the less we depend upon those things that are beyond our power. We can all find our own ways to best achieve this, of course, yet I can’t help but recognize that I am hardly as independent as I would like to think I am.

I wish to rule myself, even as I remain attached to so many unnecessary complexities and luxuries, am bound by conditions that infringe on the free exercise of my conscience, and am for too ready to let someone else do for me what I should be doing for myself.

If I could produce the food I eat, or make the clothes I wear, or craft more of the tools I use in daily life, or provide my own shelter and comfort from what is immediately around me, I would be in a better place to practice a Stoic self-sufficiency.

This hardly requires withdrawing into isolation or reducing life to some bestial state. To support oneself does not exclude helping others to support themselves, and simplicity should not be confused with denying ourselves what is necessary.

As creatures of reason and choice, we are made to cooperate with one another. My wife and I will often joke that being codependent is not as the same as being interdependent, but I would suggest that there is indeed a real difference between living someone’s life for him and assisting someone in living his own life on his own terms.

I never cease to be amazed at how I end up wanting less whenever I have to make anything for myself. Perhaps I have discovered a deeper value in my conditions when I must toil for them, and so I appreciate them more, or perhaps I simply no longer have the time to wallow in trivialities, but whatever the case, I find myself happier with a very few things that I have crafted.

It can be as simple as a meal prepared with food you have grown or raised, or brewing your own beer instead of buying it in bottles from a store, or building your own table rather than having it dropped off by a truck. It means more, precisely because it came from you.

Some people are proud of the things they are able to buy, and some people are proud of what they produce with their own hands. I really do think the difference speaks volumes, and I don’t think it is overly sentimental to say that this is what Musonius means by the contrast between the city man and the country man.

Written in 11/1999

IMAGE: Peter Paul Rubens, A Landscape with a Shepherd and His Flock (c. 1638)

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