LIAM MILBURN: Living with Nature: Reflections on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 5-6

Living with Nature:

Reflections on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 5-6

Liam Milburn

5.1

In the morning when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being.

Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist, and for which I was brought into the world?

Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm?

“But this is more pleasant!”

Do you exist then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Do you not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, and the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the Universe? And are you unwilling to do the work of a human being, and you do not make haste to do that which is according to your nature?

“But it is necessary to take rest also!”

It is necessary, however nature has fixed bounds to this too. She has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet you go beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient. Yet in your acts it is not so, but you stop short of what you can do. So you do not love yourself, for if you did, you would love your nature and her will.

Those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food, but you value your own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory.

And such men, when they have a violent affection for a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep, but rather than to perfect the things that they care for. But are the acts that concern society more vile in your eyes and less worthy of your labor?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.1 (tr Long)

Of all the topics that are regularly considered in casual conversation, few seem to be as common as discussing how much we hate getting up for work. Perhaps only complaints about the weather can come close.

It’s not hard to see why this is the case. Most everyone will seem to agree, and, like the weather, we feel as if there’s not much we can do about it in any event. We carry on, doing what is expected of us, with tired resignation and a twinge of resentment.

I have known the feeling well, and upon reflection, it has always been because I have failed to understand what my work in this life is, and how I can find joy in making an effort for its sake. It is too easy to seek the gratification of laziness when I can perceive no real value in activity.

Yes, there are all of those tasks and chores during the day, all of those obstacle courses we need to run, so that we can put food on the table and a roof over our heads. But these things are accessories to life, and not the work of a human being.

Yes, there are all the orders and demands given to us by those who are richer or stronger than we are, and we comply so that we can find ourselves some acceptance and approval. But these things are conveniences of life, and not the work of a human being.

Yes, there are all sorts of skills and careers we may pursue, all of them with their own specific purpose in making everyone’s life easier. But these things are only an assistance in life, and not the work of a human being.

When an ant, or a bee, or any living thing dedicates itself completely to its own task and place in Nature, it does so out of an instinctive drive to fulfill its very purpose. Is it sufficient to say that the purpose of a human being is to get a job, buy things, and stay out of trouble?

If that is all I have to live for, it should come as no surprise that I will dislike the very idea of work, and I will prefer to sleep in. The work of a human being, that which we essentially and universally share in common, is to pursue virtue, to know what is true and to love what is good, to always think with compassion and to act with justice. I most certainly wouldn’t want to get out of bed to crawl along in traffic, shuffle papers, crank out widgets all day, or get yelled at by the boss, though I will gladly jump up right away to have a chance to be happy.

That is, after all, what the work of a human being is, not to become rich or important, but to be happy, to live with excellence, whatever our different particular roles in life may be. With that in mind, work, rightly understood, is not a burden, but a blessed opportunity.

When people are passionate about what they are doing, and truly love the goals that they seek, they will gladly put aside most anything else for the sake of that purpose. Just as the Stoic Turn flips just about everything on its head, it also redefines the dignity of work, because it redefines the very things in life that are worth working for.

5.2

How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression that is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.2 (tr Long)

I often become stubborn when someone tells me that something important is really quite easy, especially when I have found the exact same thing to be extremely difficult in my own efforts. Dwelling upon anger will never lead to good things.

“Perhaps it is easy for you, since you are so much better. But for the rest of us peasants, it’s no walk in the park!”

As always, it is my own ignorance that is getting in the way, my unwillingness to think the problem through clearly. It doesn’t matter at all, for my purposes, what motive someone else may have had in mind when he told it was easy. He may indeed have been bragging about himself, or as I suspect is the case for Marcus Aurelius, he may well have been trying to be helpful.

Troublesome impressions, whether they are immediate feelings, haunting memories of the past, or worries about the future, are, in and of themselves, completely powerless over my ability to judge them. They are simply something given, feelings made present to my awareness. They only achieve any power when I offer them value in my estimations, and when I allow them to influence my sense of true and false, good and bad. Then they affect my actions.

A child may fear the impression of a monster under the bed, a young man may fear the impression of being unloved, and an old man may fear the impression of failure. If he only chooses to remove these objects from his attention, because he fully understands that none of them are important for his living, they will no longer trouble him.

I am not troubled, for example, by the impression of seeing people wearing bright colors or muted colors, or of being tall or short, since those qualities have nothing to do with their merits. They do not enter into my thinking as being relevant. It is therefore easy to disregard them.

Now why does it still seem so difficult to remove other sorts of impressions? The recollection of that betrayal? Being bullied by important folks? The temptation of a fifth of bourbon when I feel hopeless?

It isn’t removing the impression that’s the problem at all, as I can always look the other way. No, the difficulty is in still wanting to pay attention. I should never blame the feeling, but I should take responsibility for what I do with it. I still desire it, from previous habit, because I haven’t yet chosen to not desire it. Once the commitment is made, wiping away the impression is indeed easy, but before the commitment is made, wiping away the impression is nigh impossible. I still want it to be there, after all!

The feeling isn’t the obstacle. My thinking is the obstacle. And who really controls that? I’ve usually been attacking it from the wrong end.

5.3

Judge every word and deed that are according to Nature to be fit for you; and do not be diverted by the blame which follows from any people, nor by their words, but if a thing is good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of you.

For those persons have their peculiar leading principle and follow their peculiar movement. Do not regard these things, but go straight on, following your own nature and the common Nature; and the way of both is one.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.3 (tr Long)

What will people think, and what will people say? It is one of those odd habits of human behavior to take the very thing that defines us, our own thinking and action, and then immediately allow that to be ruled by the thinking and actions of others.

It is something like reducing life to a game of Simon Says, or like a reflection of the never-ending cycle of new fashions in clothing, music, or politics. Look around at everyone else, and follow suit.

The Stoic will never tell you not to listen to others, or not to seek wisdom and guidance, or not to look to a good example, but he will insist that you do your own thinking and choosing for yourself. We are all tasked with finding our own place and playing our own part in the order of Nature, not to find another’s place or play another’s part.

If I can, with a conscience that is both humble and confident, know what must be done to live well, then that is what I should do. I should not be looking at what happens to be popular, what will bring me anything external, and what will simply improve my circumstances.

Am I seeking virtue above all else? That will do. Starting with a sincere effort to practice the Cardinal Virtues, in the most ordinary and everyday of situations, is as good a place as any. That is what will improve my nature, and therefore be in harmony with Nature as a whole.

We often struggle with what we think is a false opposition between ourselves and other things. We assume there must be the presence of conflict, that my way and your way will necessarily disagree, or that cooperation or compromise is settling for second best.

But this does not need to be so. I can rest assured that if I do what is right for myself, living simply as a human being, then I will never need to do any harm to anyone or anything else.

My own true benefit is always within the benefit of my neighbor, because he is a social animal like myself. My own true benefit is always within the benefit of the entire Universe, because I am a small but integral part of it. They are always one and the same, even when I refuse to see it. Their ways will always converge, even when it is not immediately apparent.

People may pursue values and goals we discern as contrary to Nature, but even such a use of choice by others, however it may frustrate or sadden us, also serves Nature. If nothing else, I may use it to commit myself to what is good all the more.

Providence has a wonderful way of making right from wrong, of turning obstacles into opportunities.

5.4

I go through the things which happen according to Nature until I shall fall and rest, breathing out my breath into that element out of which I daily draw it in, and falling upon that earth out of which my father collected the seed, and my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk. Out of which during so many years I have been supplied with food and drink, which bears me when I tread on it and abuse it for so many purposes.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.4 (tr Long)

When I seek to live according to Nature, I need to remember that this is not merely a romantic notion, or a noble abstraction, or an intellectual luxury, or some pleasant diversion from the business of the day. It is the very business of the day, the stuff itself out of which I am made, to which I am connected, and to which I will return. To embrace Nature, as it is understood by the Stoic, is never to turn away from everyday living, but to finally embrace the fullness of everyday living.

As much as our human endeavors often seem to mask it, everything that we are is inseparable from the order of Nature, and even our most impressive artificial posturing would be nothing separately of that harmony. The part has no meaning without the whole.

I often notice how strong and independent we think we are, and though we might be quite adept at this in our time of high technology and social engineering, this was surely true for the Rome of Marcus Aurelius as well. We eat, drink, breathe, and consume or manipulate all sorts of the things around us, quite oblivious to all the deeper relations between them. We pursue our careers and the improvement of our position in life, quite oblivious to our very human purpose, and the depth of our bond with other persons.

I think it is no accident that the same man who pays no attention to the air he breathes is quite often the same man who pays no attention to the dignity of his neighbor. He pollutes the one with his waste, and pollutes the other with his greed.

The tools of power and vanity only give the illusion of independence. We are just as bound to everything and everyone else as we have always been. It is fortunate that Nature is patient with our tantrums and abuses.

The tension of this passage by Marcus Aurelius, between being necessarily joined to the unity of all things on the one hand, and my stubborn insistence on breaking myself away from that unity on the other, or between being in Nature and yet stepping on it, brings to mind my favorite poem, which I never miss the opportunity to share:

“God’s Grandeur”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

5.5

You say men cannot admire the sharpness of your wits. So be it, but there are many other things of which you cannot say, that you are not formed for them by Nature.

Show those qualities, then, that are altogether in your power: sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with your portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling magnanimity.

Do you not see how many qualities you are immediately able to exhibit, in which there is no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet you still remain voluntarily below the mark?

Or are you compelled through being defectively furnished by Nature to murmur, and to be stingy, and to flatter, and to find fault with your poor body, and to try to please men, and to make great display, and to be so restless in thy mind?

No, by the gods, but you might have been delivered from these things long ago. Only if in truth you can be charged with being rather slow and dull of comprehension, you must exert yourself about this also, not neglecting it nor yet taking pleasure in your dullness.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.5 (tr Long)

I noticed from very early on, from as soon as they decided to send me to school, that I was never really thought of as smart, funny, charming, confident, creative, or handsome. I also learned very quickly that these were the very qualities we are expected to admire in others. We tend to choose our friends, our lovers, and our colleagues by precisely those measures. We also believe we will become successful, popular, and rich precisely because we possess such things.

In hindsight, I maintained a remarkable sense of optimism during those years. When I realized that emulating such characteristics wasn’t in the cards, I did my best to work with being myself, and hoping that this could make up for the absence of all the rest. There were a few times when it worked, but far too many times it didn’t, and at one point the imbalance simply broke me inside.

Then, as so many will sadly do, I started to complain, to become angry, and to feel sorry for myself. I would put everything I had within me into an endeavor, and I would find it completely rejected or ignored. I would become frustrated when those who were successful, precisely because of their natural gifts, would be dismissive of the fact that I wasn’t just like them.

My mistake was threefold. First, I did not understand what true success even was. Second, I did not understand what qualities were actually necessary to achieve true success. Third, I did not understand that those qualities were hardly beyond my power. That was why I was discontent and despondent.

Success is not what I may receive from my efforts, but what I may give from my efforts.

Of all the qualities I may possess, the only one necessary for true success is virtue.

Virtue is always something I can do for myself, regardless of whatever circumstances or gifts I may or may not have.

Let’s say I’m not terribly clever, or outgoing, or good-looking. I can gladly accept what I may have, and work to improve it to the best that it can be. Is my mind slow? Am I socially awkward? Do I look hideous to others? There are certainly things I can do to make those things better, in however small a way.

The danger facing me is neglecting what is given entirely, or just sitting back and feeling miserable about it.

Even then, these qualities aren’t the essential ones, and what other people think about them is neither here nor there. There is no need to buy any more options or accessories. Everything life needs come standard.

Can I be thoughtful, loving, and grateful in all of my dealings? It takes nothing special to do these things. Put the proverbial dunce cap on my head, and I can still do them.

I will only choose to be ignorant, hateful, and demanding when I am dissatisfied with who I might be, and I expect to receive whatever I feel jealous about in others.

When I was in the Boy Scouts, I had one of the most wonderful Scoutmasters there could ever be. I once told him that I felt inferior, because I couldn’t always do the things the other Scouts, who were physically stronger and emotionally more confident, could manage to do. He gave me one of the kindest looks I’ve seen, not one of condescension, but one of complete understanding.

“Not everyone can do everything,” he said, “but anyone can do anything that matters. Can you recite the Scout Law for me?”

That I could. “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”

“Can you do those things?”

I hesitated. “I think so?”

“No, can you do them? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Will you do them? Yes or no? I don’t care how far you can swim, or how good you are at math, or how many matches it takes for you to light a fire.”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re a Scout, and one of the best. The rest is just window dressing.” I still use that phrase to this day, thanks to him.

Not everyone has the tools to be a big man, but everyone has the tools to be a good man. Am I smart, funny, charming, confident, creative, or handsome? Not really. Am I simply decent? Only I can decide that.

5.6

One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down to his account as a favor conferred.

Another is not ready to do this, but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows what he has done.

A third in a manner does not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine that has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit.

As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.

Must a man then be one of these, who in a manner act thus without observing it? Yes, but this very thing is necessary, the observation of what a man is doing. For, it may be said, it is characteristic of the social animal to perceive that he is working in a social manner, and indeed to wish that his social partner also should perceive it.

It is true what you say, but you do not rightly understand what is now said. And for this reason you will become one of those of whom I spoke before, for even they are misled by a certain show of reason. But if you will choose to understand the meaning of what is said, do not fear that for this reason you will omit any social act.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.6 (tr Long)

The good or bad within my actions will come not only from what I do, but also from the disposition with which I do it. Merit is not only in the deed, but also in its relationship to the doer.

Some people will expect payment for an act of kindness, which, of course, ceases to make it a kindness. It is actually a transaction. I should be able to recognize such people immediately, because they will always attach conditions to the giving of their gifts, which now makes them investments, and terms for their promises, which now makes them contracts.

When the good of another becomes a means for my own profit, this is no longer really a good deed.

Other people may not demand any external compensation in return, so I may more readily think of this as an expression of sincerity. I should not so quickly deceive myself. They are also seeking something else in return, an internal sense of thinking well of themselves, of self-praise, of importance and superiority, It is what my great-grandmother used to call “lording it over” someone.

When the goal is gratification instead of service, this still isn’t really a good deed.

There are people, however, for whom the goodness of the act is itself its own purpose, where action and intention are in complete convergence. They do what they should do, because it fulfills their very nature, and is for the benefit of all of Nature. I can recognize such people because they do not need recognition. They are content to simply produce good and abundant fruit.

When the deed is rightly done, nothing more is required. One gladly moves forward to the next opportunity to be of service.

Marcus Aurelius offers a qualification here, however, so that we do not misunderstand. The horse will run, the dog will hunt, and the vine will produce fruit from instinct, with no conscious reflection on those actions. They do not know what they are doing in the same way that human beings do, and they are simply moved to do so. Human nature, however, adds the power of reason into the mix.

I should certainly do well for only its own sake, seeking no further reward or gratification. Yet this does not mean that I should not be aware of what I do and why I do it, or that others should not be aware of what I do and why I do it. The good sought for itself does not exclude a perception of that good, as is so fitting and necessary for all human action.

Simply put, because I should never do good only so that it can be observed, does not mean I and others should not observe that I am doing good. Humility is not the same thing as ignorance, and while a man should always be humble, he should never be ignorant.

Be like the vine that produces good fruit without expecting anything in return, but be more than the vine in perceiving how and why it is good fruit.

5.7

A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, down on the ploughed fields of the Athenians and on the plains.

In truth we ought not to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble fashion.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.7 (tr Long)

I am always hesitant to discuss prayer, or religion, precisely because it is both so powerful and so personal. Stoicism, however, is very much a “big tent” philosophy, and Stoic thinking can be of great assistance in however we may choose to understand God.

Prayer, in the broadest sense our communication with the Divine, can surely be a profound means of relating ourselves to what is absolute, but it can also be fraught with danger. Prayer can be a humble expression of praise, thanksgiving, or supplication. It can also too easily become twisted into a form of showmanship, vanity, or bargaining.

How easy it is to turn prayer into a spectacle. I know something has gone wrong when a prayer becomes a performance, something made public instead of private, a way to excite the passions and manipulate the thinking of others.

How easy it is to turn prayer into a worship of the self. I know something has gone wrong when a prayer is suddenly about man dwelling on his own importance, about making himself seem big, instead of making himself a part of what is bigger.

How easy it is to turn prayer into a means for getting what I desire. I know something has gone wrong when a prayer is an arrogant attempt to make things exist only for our gratification, and no longer a respect for Providence.

I have always kept in mind the insight that prayer isn’t something that is supposed to change God, but rather something that is supposed to change the way I relate myself to God. From a Stoic perspective, it is never within my power to determine Providence, even as it is within my power to freely participate with Providence.

Don’t give me what I think I want. Give me what You know I need. A prayer is not something to which I should add my own conditions, as if I was negotiating a sale. There’s a good reason I was taught as a child to pray with only four simple words: “Thy will be done.”

I think of all the people I have known who have turned their prayer into a mockery, and I think of all the times I have come far too close to doing the same myself. I once knew someone for whom God suddenly appeared after she had already decided something; it was quite amazing how He would miraculously communicate His agreement with her.

I once knew someone else whose prayers always seemed to be a way to degrade anyone he disagreed with, and for whom religion was nothing more than an expression of an ideology for the privileged, a war between “us” and “them”. “Do it may way” and “slay my enemies” are hardly dignified prayers.

If I do choose to pray, my prayer should be simple and noble, and never designed to impress others, glorify myself, or make demands of anyone or anything. As Marcus Aurelius says, I should limit myself to being open to receive, and to be grateful for, what Nature has to give.

5.8

Just as we must understand when it is said, that Asclepius prescribed to this man horse-exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going without shoes, so we must understand it when it is said, that the nature of the Universe prescribed to this man disease, or mutilation, or loss or anything else of the kind.

For in the first case prescribed means something like this: he prescribed this for this man as a thing adapted to procure health. And in the second case it means: That which happens to every man is fixed in a manner for him suitably to his destiny.

For this is what we mean when we say that things are suitable to us, as the workmen say of squared stones in walls or the pyramids, that they are suitable, when they fit them to one another in some kind of connection. For there is altogether one fitness, one harmony.

And as the Universe is made up out of all bodies to be such a body as it is, so out of all existing causes necessity is made up to be such a cause as it is. And even those who are completely ignorant understand what I mean, for they say, destiny brought this to such a person. This then was brought and this was prescribed to him. Let us then receive these things, as well as those that Asclepius prescribes.

Many, as a matter of course, among even his prescriptions are disagreeable, but we accept them in the hope of health. Let the perfecting and accomplishment of the things, which the common Nature judges to be good, be judged by you to be of the same kind as your health. And so accept everything that happens, even if it seems disagreeable, because it leads to this, to the health of the Universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus.

For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought, if it were not useful for the whole. Neither does the nature of anything, whatever it may be, cause anything that is not suitable to that which is directed by it.

For two reasons then it is right to be content with that which happens to you. The one, because it was done for you and prescribed for you, and in a manner had reference to you, originally from the most ancient causes spun with your destiny. The other, because even that which comes severally to every man is to the power which administers the Universe a cause of felicity and perfection, even of its very continuance.

For the integrity of the whole is mutilated, if you cut off anything whatever from the conjunction and the continuity either of the parts or of the causes. And you do cut off, as far as it is in your power, when you art dissatisfied, and in a manner try to put anything out of the way.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.8 (tr Long)

This passage from Marcus Aurelius was for me, quite literally, a lifesaver. I happened upon it at a time when I was in such pain that I could not make it through the day without collapsing into uncontrollable sobbing. People try to tell us that it will get better, and that it will all end up for the best. They surely mean well, but that is of little comfort when the suffering is crippling. But instead of just patting me on the back and tossing out a phrase that tells me my situation will change, Marcus Aurelius explains himself. He tells me why whatever happens always happens for a reason, and always happens because it is good both for me and for the whole world.

It isn’t even about wanting to change the situation, but understanding that any situation can always be a source of benefit, if it is only understood and applied rightly.

In the words of Ovid:

Endure and persist; this pain will one day do good for you.

The passage helped me to apply the Stoic Turn in a profound way, and reading it suddenly and unexpectedly gave me a whole new perspective. It didn’t make the pain cease, but it gave me the means to find purpose within it. That moment wasn’t, of course, the end of the story, even as it was the beginning of the story.

It all revolves around the central Stoic principle that we are not measured by our circumstances, however extreme they may be. We are measured by our own thoughts, choices, and actions about those circumstances. Instead of dwelling on what was coming at me from outside, I could rather ask how what came at me from outside could be transformed into something different on the inside. My task wasn’t merely to suffer; my task was to discover how to find benefit for myself through that suffering.

If I came to recognize that the only thing that was unconditionally good for me was my character, then I could ask myself how the things that were happening could help to build that character, and in turn give me peace and joy. There were many things I hated about the world, and many more things that I hated about myself, but the only thing I ever found of value within myself was my ability, however meager, to love. And it dawned on me that whatever love was within now me had only been nurtured through my grief. If pain had not broken my cynicism and disdain, my heart would still have been smothered and neglected.

The very quality I treasured within me had come about from suffering. What seemed so bad had been so good all along. I had, without even fully understanding it at the time, made something worthwhile out of something painful.

This was true for me, and also for everything around me. Once I began to understand that the world is not a series of random and unconnected events, I also began to understand that every cause and every effect, and every part within the whole, is precisely where it is meant to be. Everything plays its own distinct role, the good within each thing serving the good of all things.

I had to smile when I put the book down, because I realized I hadn’t even happened upon the passage at all. I had been meant to read it from long before I was even born. It was another small step in finding the path I needed to follow for myself.

When Asclepius, the god of medicine, or just my neighborhood doctor, prescribes a cure, it isn’t always going to be pleasant. Sometimes it will seem worse than the disease. But the doctor prescribes medicine to help us become healthy, just as Providence prescribes our circumstances to help us become better, wiser, and happier.

5.9

Do not be disgusted, or discouraged, or dissatisfied, if you do not succeed in doing everything according to right principles; but when you have failed, return back again, and be content if the greater part of what you do is consistent with man's nature, and love this to which you return.

And do not return to philosophy as if she were a master, but act like those who have sore eyes and apply a bit of sponge and egg, or as another applies a plaster, or drenching with water. For thus you will not fail to obey reason, and you will repose in it.

And remember that philosophy requires only the things that your nature requires, but you would have something else that is not according to Nature.

It may be objected, why something is more agreeable than this that I am doing? But is not this the very reason why pleasure deceives us? And consider if magnanimity, freedom, simplicity, equanimity, piety, are not more agreeable. For what is more agreeable than wisdom itself, when you think of the security and the happy course of all things that depend on the faculty of understanding and knowledge?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.9 (tr Long)

We will often grow resentful when we feel that others have done us wrong, and we will often turn that same instinct inwards, growing resentful of ourselves when we feel that we have failed.

As with any situation I may face, I can choose to dwell upon what is wrong with it, or I can choose to build upon what is right with it. A step taken in the wrong direction need never be the end of it, but can be a reminder to go back the way I came, and a mistake can simply serve to highlight the distinction between what is given by Nature and what is extraneous through my vanity.

I don’t need to assume that a correction must be harsh and demeaning. Rightly understood, a correction is like a relief, a much-needed cure and comfort from what ails me. I was never, for example, able to understand people in authority who thought that insult and injury would make others work harder or better. I always found myself more encouraged when I was told how well it could be done, instead of how poorly it had been done. Why should I be angry with others, when I could nurture them? Why be angry with myself, when I could nurture myself?

I will fear failure because I assume success is something beyond me, something I simply can’t do. Now that may well be true when it comes to the success of honors and careers, of winning a football game or making millions in high finance. It is, however, most certainly not true when it comes to being successful at humanity. No skill, no strength, no tool is required that has not already been given by Nature. I may not be good enough for everything, but I am more than good enough for that. I get myself in trouble when I seek more than I really need.

No matter. Dispose of the unnecessary, and let my awareness that it is unnecessary serve as a marker for what is necessary.

A perfect instance of this is whenever I start thinking that it is necessary to first seek pleasure. I am impressed by its immediacy, but then sorely disappointed by the fact that it is never complete. It does not fulfill who I am as a person, and it requires a dependence upon the feelings that proceed from other things, indicating precisely how I am neglecting essential aspects of what is already within my nature, and also adding other things to my nature that are not required.

When I am tempted by gratification alone, I only need to ask myself what it is that truly comes from me, and what it is that has very little to do with me at all. This is how I can get myself back on track, by relying upon my actions, not becoming enslaved to my passions. Virtue is always more agreeable, because it proceeds from a mastery of self, while pleasure is less agreeable, because it so easily causes me to lose myself.

5.10

Things are in such a kind of envelopment that they have seemed to philosophers, not a few nor those common philosophers, altogether unintelligible; no, even to the Stoics themselves they seem difficult to understand.

And all of our assent is changeable, for where is the man who never changes? Carry your thoughts then to the objects themselves, and consider how short-lived they are and worthless, and that they may be in the possession of a filthy wretch, or a whore, or a robber.

Then turn to the morals of those who live with you, and it is hardly possible to endure even the most agreeable of them, to say nothing of a man being hardly able to endure himself.

In such darkness then and dirt, and in so constant a flux both of substance and of time, and of motion and of things moved, what there is worth being highly prized or even an object of serious pursuit, I cannot imagine.

But on the contrary it is a man's duty to comfort himself, and to wait for the natural dissolution and not to be vexed at the delay, but to rest in these principles only.

The one, that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the Nature of the Universe, and the other, that it is in my power never to act contrary to my god and daemon, for there is no man who will compel me to this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.10 (tr Long)

Our circumstances are constantly changing around us, just as our own thoughts and feelings are constantly changing within us, and such variability can easily lead us to uncertainty and doubt. It is then far too easy to say that the world makes no sense, even as we should know that difficult things are not impossible things. The solution can only be to cling to those things in life that are reliable, and never to confuse them with those things that are totally unreliable.

Each year added to my life has shown me more and more how passing and fleeting the objects outside of me are, and this in turn reminds me that I would be foolish to depend upon anything that comes and goes so quickly.

At first the changes may seem negligible, but before I know it, only a few relics and collapsing ruins remain. They will also be gone before too long. I then have that occasional moment where I realize, with a combination of awe and dread, that I am quite the relic and collapsing ruin myself.

There is nothing to be truly prized here.

I look at how people around me are thinking and living, and I see how many of them are hardly thinking at all, or are thinking based on sophistry and illusion. Just when I believe I could never find ideas and values any more absurd, whole new crops of trendy prejudices prove me wrong.

What we were supposed to think was unquestioned truth last year is now an abomination, and this year’s ideological craze will be on tomorrow’s rubbish heap. I’m not sure if I should find it all ridiculous or frightening, and then I catch a glimpse of just how much I am subject to the ebb and flow as anyone else.

There is nothing to be truly prized here.

With such a state of affairs, it is no wonder that we frantically rush to grab what little we can, or resignedly play along with the game, or surrender entirely, and quietly fade away. Where can there be comfort in the middle of all this impermanence?

Philosophies that try to find meaning in corruptible circumstances will inevitably fail. Here Stoicism has an advantage, because it offers principles I can always count on, whatever may come and go, on the outside and on the inside.

These principles are clear and simple enough:

If Nature permits it to happen, I can always find a way to make good of it.

I can always make good of anything, since how I choose to think and act is completely within my power, and within no one else’s.

To live with virtue, and to avoid vice, is something distinctly mine for as long as I live, and it can allow me to return peacefully back into the Nature that produced me, content with a job well done. That is absolutely reliable.

5.11

About what am I now employing my own soul?

On every occasion, I must ask myself this question, and inquire, what I now have in this part of me that they call the ruling principle?

And whose soul do I have now? That of a child, or of a young man, or of a feeble woman, or of a tyrant, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.11 (tr Long)

When we are asked to identify ourselves, we will usually respond by explaining our careers, our honors, or our friends. We may add where we came from, the importance of our position right now, and the places we would like to be in the future.

Yet these things are about our relationships with externals, with qualities and dispositions that are in themselves completely indifferent. Even when we speak of our attitudes, or our goals and dreams, we are still referring them to what will happen to us, not the bare measure of simply what we are thinking and doing. There is a world of difference between saying that “I will work honestly to get a promotion” and saying simply that “I will be honest.”

The questions of “who am I?” or “what am I doing?” are quite regularly deflected. It is as if the self is nothing more than a consequence of everything else around me. The Stoics regularly spoke of the soul or the mind, that power of reason by which I may judge and decide, as the ruling principle. Yet as soon as my soul is defined by what happens to me, and not by my action, it is no longer a ruling principle, but a principle of being ruled.

I knew a fellow who explained to me that his entire life had been planned around a carefully designed professional path. He would start by making a name for himself in private law practice, and then find a job working in government, preferably in a way that made him appear as a selfless public servant.

From there, he had two options, either getting appointed as a judge, or winning election to public office. It would finish off with sitting on a corporate board of directors, or becoming a university president. Everything else, his education, his home, his friends, and his family, was all a part of this plan. He was quite proud to explain the details. I could only bring myself to smile and nod, though I sensed he wanted me to congratulate him.

By all means, get elected to public office, or become an airline pilot, or serve ice cream. We may have gifts or preferences for any number of roles or occupations, but all of this is incidental to our primary task of being human. The question I should always ask myself is how I am making something of my own character, not how I am making something of myself in the eyes of others.

What is it that is truly within me? Whatever the circumstances I may find myself in, how am I choosing to live? How am I distinguishing true from false, and right from wrong? Will I try to be a good man, whether they make me a king or throw me out into the street?

“But I want to be the king, and not get thrown into the street!” That would indeed be more pleasant, but as soon as I make that my goal, I have surrendered my ruling principle. I have made the excellence of my actions subservient to the desirability of my conditions.

Strip away all the trappings, and look at what is underneath the social cosmetics. Am I a good man, striving to be understanding, compassionate and fair, committed to pursuing what is right, always maintaining discipline over myself? Or am I close-minded, heartless and selfish, a coward and a deceiver, ruled by my desires?

What kind of man am I living like within my soul? Or perhaps I am not even living the life of a man, but that of a beast?

“Who am I?” No more and no less than how much I am willing to put anything and everything on the line, right here and now, to rule myself with virtue.

5.12

What kind of things those are that appear good to the many, we may learn even from this.

For if any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.

But if a man has first conceived as good the things that appear to the many to be good, he will listen and readily receive as very applicable that which was said by the comic writer. Thus even the many perceive the difference.

For were it not so, this saying would not offend and would not be rejected in the first case, while we receive it when it is said of wealth, and of the means which further luxury and fame, as said fitly and wittily.

Go on, then, and ask if we should value and think those things to be good, to which after their first conception in the mind the words of the comic writer might be aptly applied—that he who has them, through pure abundance has not a place to ease himself in.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.12 (tr Long)

I will sometimes feel like we live in an age overrun with too much satire, mockery, and ridicule, though even the briefest survey of history will remind me that people have always been drawn in by the abuse of humor to dismiss and degrade. I suspect I simply notice it so much around me, and therefore assume it is a sign of the times, because I have often come to recognize it as a form of self-importance through cruelty.

The problem is hardly about laughing, but rather about laughing at others, instead of laughing with them. That distinction is clearly drawn by our intentions. Friends will laugh and joke together, but among enemies, one will laugh while the other grits his teeth.

I have always been a committed trickster and joker, much like my father, and I have sometimes managed to pull off the most involved of gags, at the expense of both others and myself.  I usually work with a straight face and just a touch of subtle sarcasm. Yet few things fill me with regret as much as having ended up being brutally offensive, in a terribly failed attempt at being amusing. A bad joke told to the first girl I ever danced with cost me what could well have been my first date. I hope you’ve managed to forgive me by now, Jennifer.

Marcus Aurelius observes how the way we use humor reveals quite a bit about what we know is truly right and good, whether explicitly or implicitly. We are all quite ready to make fun of the things that vulgar people care about, and even vulgar people themselves will hoot and holler about their own vices. “It’s funny because it’s so true!”

But most people, unless they are deeply disturbed, will never find it amusing to mock decency. We can laugh about vices, but there’s really nothing to laugh about with virtue. A greedy lawyer is completely hilarious, but a compassionate lawyer is just a nice fellow, if you can manage to find one. You can pull off a joke about a priest if he is a drunk or a lecher, but you can’t pull off a joke about a priest if he is humble and pious. People who love money and fame are fair game, but people who love their neighbors not so much. Ned Flanders is really only funny as a foil to Homer Simpson.

Whenever anyone tries to be funny about what is right and good, most people will either shrug and turn away, or become indignant and offended.

Even in the most irreverent of times and places, there is that line we must not cross. When I was younger, my friends and I would joke about most anything. Personal quirks, annoying habits and attitudes, sex, politics, even the questionable topics of culture and race, were fair game in our circle.

There were two places, however, we did not dare to go, unless we wanted a good beating. I imagine it has long been much the same for most fun-loving men, whether they are solid guys or scoundrels.

One did not joke about another man’s religion, and one did not joke about the women in a man’s life. That included his wife, but especially his sisters and his mother. This says a little something about what my crowd thought was genuinely good in life.

The specifics may differ, but the principle remains the same. One way we can distinguish good from bad is that we don’t stand for the mockery of what is truly good.

Now one reason I will feel uncomfortable with what passes as contemporary humor is how I perceive that line moving dangerously close, or being ignored entirely. Even then, however, what seems an exception is just another modification of the rule. Again, when we twist humor simply to insult and belittle those we dislike, we can only manage it by giving them bad attributes, whether they are real or imagined. We make fun of an honest man by suggesting he is really a hypocrite, or a kind man by saying he is actually obsequious.

Humor can be a very subjective thing, and a very touchy thing, and we can either use it well or abuse it. Whatever the case, it always exposes something about our real values.

5.13

I am composed of the formal and the material; and neither of them will perish into non-existence, as neither of them came into existence out of non-existence.

Every part of me then will be reduced by change into some part of the Universe, and that again will change into another part of the Universe, and so on forever.

And by consequence of such a change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on for ever in the other direction. For nothing hinders us from saying so, even if the Universe is administered according to definite periods of revolution.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.13 (tr Long)

The stress upon the unity of all things in Stoicism has always spoken to me, especially because we all too readily slide into the completely opposite direction of highlighting division and difference. The many are only possible through the measure of the one, and distinctions are only possible through the measure of what is shared.

This passage helps me to remember that the unity of all things is not only for this moment, but binds together all moments. It surrounds me here and now, and also passes forward and backwards, into all that was and all that will be.

Stoic principles can admit of many different perspectives on the structure of the physical Universe, or on the essence of the Divine, or on human immortality. Whatever specific views we might hold, however, Stoicism will always insist that nothing ever completely begins or completely ceases, because everything that changes proceeds from something else, and then into something else.

In this sense, I can know that who I am, the active principle of having a certain identity, and what I am made of, the passive principle of the matter out of which I am composed, does not merely come to an end. Both of these principles continue, even as they are transformed into different states.

My own attempts at understanding and practicing Stoicism have been private for most of my life, largely because so much of what Stoicism speaks to for me is so deeply personal. At the same time, however, I am also careful about discussing Stoic thinking with others because of the responses it can elicit.

Some will assume that Stoicism is like a cult or organized religion, which is hardly the case. Others will assume that Stoic principles necessarily contradict certain things they might already believe in.

I have been told that Stoic are atheists, even though the entire tradition has always had a central place for the Divine and for Providence, and is compatible with a wide range of theistic views. I have been told that Stoics are materialists, though this usually considers the definition of matter far more narrowly than the Stoics did. I have been told that Stoics are determinists, yet the Stoics always understood that human freedom does not contradict fate, but rather exists completely within it.

I have also been told that Stoics don’t believe in the immortality of the soul, and so a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, for instance, couldn’t possibly accept anything Stoic.

Now read the above passage again, and recognize that Marcus Aurelius is clearly saying that everything about who I am will never cease, both in matter and in form. Again, Stoicism is a broad philosophy, and can accommodate a variety of interpretations, and exist within other traditions, and it only insists here that there will always be a “me”, though necessarily changed in some fundamental way. We can always say more about how that may take place, but I suggest that the Stoic will leave those specifics to you.

The unity of all things necessarily tells me that there is also a continuity to all things, and the unity of all things also tells me never to assume conflict and disagreement where there can be balance and harmony.

5.14

Reason and the reasoning art are powers that are sufficient for themselves and for their own works.

They move then from a first principle which is their own, and they make their way to the end which is proposed to them; and this is the reason why such acts are named catorthoseis or right acts, which word signifies that they proceed by the right road.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.14 (tr Long)

Observe how many of the things we allow to guide our lives involve us being determined by those very things. If I follow my desire for pleasure, it is the objects of pleasure that rule me. If I seek to accumulate possessions, what I think I own ends up owning me. If I wish to be loved and esteemed, the thinking of others replaces my thinking.

In any case like this, where the value of the self is viewed through something else, there is a certain surrender of awareness, of estimation, of deliberate choice. I am no longer setting the conditions for happiness, but allowing my happiness to be conditioned. It will often take on that feeling of walking through life in a mindless haze, bumped back and forth, drawn in by the carrot but fearing the stick.

The Stoic understands that behind our passions, our bodies, and the world of others around us, there is the power of reason. This allows me not only to be aware of other things, but also to be aware of myself, and thereby to rule myself. Action need not follow from instinct or habit alone, because judgment follows from an act of conscious choice.

Only as a creature of reason am I deciding, instead of having it decided for me.

Beginning with the power to grasp what is true and good, given to it by Nature, the mind can proceed to identify the purpose of being human, and how that purpose can be fulfilled. It provides the end, as well as ordering the means toward that end; right thinking is what points our acts in the right direction.

Through all of this process the mind is sufficient for itself, moving under its own power, ordering its own thoughts, making its own decisions. It will only lose such independence when it defers judgment to something other than itself, when it chooses not to decide.

Being gifted with reason is something like being able to drive myself down the road, instead of having to rely on being driven by someone else. Most American teenagers understand this all too well, because they have places they want to go, without the means to get there themselves. Getting that driver’s license is seen as a symbol of freedom, but with it must also come a realization of the responsibility that comes with such freedom.

There is great power in being able to follow my own road. It also remains entirely up to my own thinking if I will be wise enough to choose the right road.

5.15

None of these things ought to be called a man's, that do not belong to a man, as man. They are not required of a man, nor does man's nature promise them, nor are they the means of man's nature attaining his end.

Neither then does the end of man lie in these things, nor yet that which aids to the accomplishment of this end, and that which aids towards this end is that which is good.

Besides, if any of these things did belong to man, it would not be right for a man to despise them and to set himself against them.

Nor would a man be worthy of praise, who showed that he did not want these things, nor would he who stinted himself in any of them be good, if indeed these things were good.

But now the more of these things a man deprives himself of, or of other things like them, or even when he is deprived of any of them, the more patiently he endures the loss, just in the same degree he is a better man.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.15 (tr Long)

Ask anyone what he considers to be rightly his own, and he will almost always list his property, his worldly achievements, or his family.

Yet, from a Stoic perspective, he owns none of these things. They may well be things in his life, but they are not the things that make his life. They are not his at all. Consider them as something lent to him, not as something deeded. When Fortune gives gifts, we really only borrow them, and none of us can claim any rights to them at all.

“But it’s my house!”

No, it’s the house you happen to reside in right now, and just as you think you won it by paying a price to others, others can just as well take it back from you on their own terms.

“But she’s my wife!”

All legal questions aside, is she your friend? I would hope she would be, but whether or not she loves you is entirely up to her. You should rightly always love her, but that never makes her yours.

“But I earned it!”

You earned nothing. You were given things, like money, titles, and respect, because others thought it would serve their interest to tickle your own interest. Watch what happens the very moment you are no longer of any use to your superiors. Your money, titles, and respect will disappear in an instant.

Such realizations will only be discouraging to those people who define themselves through everything outside of themselves. They are, however, deeply encouraging to those people who define themselves by who they are, and not by what others make of them.

The things I call my possessions are not mine. My status among others is not mine. The people I call my friends are not mine. I only own myself.

And what does that involve? It means very little from one perspective, and quite a bit from another. The breadth of my power, property, or influence never belonged to me.

Even my pleasures and pains never really belonged to me, because others may decide to give or withhold them. Even my own body never really belonged to me, because others may use force to restrain it. Even the length of my life itself never really belonged to me, because others may choose to snuff it out in an instant.

If for a moment you think that isn’t true, read the daily news, and you will see immediately how none of these things are certain for any of us. Only entitled people think of them as guaranteed. They think they have paid for their rights, but they have only paid for their illusions.

Only one thing is guaranteed. For whatever time I have, under whatever circumstances are given, however great or small, I have the choice to think and act as I decide. No one else determines that. I used to think that this narrowed the scope of my being, but I now understand that it gives me everything that I need. It is my finite participation in what is infinite.

Deprive me of the things you think I need, and I may well squirm, and I may well complain. I can, however, endure the loss, since you have not touched me at all. I am only the sum of my own actions, the things within my own power. You have made yourself worse, and given me a chance to be better.

“It’s mine” takes on a whole new meaning when you’ve made the Stoic Turn.

5.16

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind, for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

Dye it then with a continuous series of such thoughts as these:

For instance, that where a man can live, there he can also live well. But he must live in a palace? Well then, he can also live well in a palace.

And again, consider that for whatever purpose each thing has been constituted, for this it has been constituted, and towards this it is carried, and its end is in that towards which it is carried. And where the end is, there also is the advantage and the good of each thing.

Now the good for the reasonable animal is society, for that we are made for society has been shown above. Is it not plain that the inferior exists for the sake of the superior? But the things that have life are superior to those that have not life, and of those that have life the superior are those that have reason.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.16 (tr Long)

I would often sneer when people spoke about the power of positive or negative thinking, because I would still practice being dismissive as a misguided means of protection. If I could scoff at it, or roll my eyes, or ignore it entirely, I could make things that felt uncomfortable seem to disappear.

What a funny thing, there I was, proving the very point I was claiming to cast aside. I was managing only the negative side, of course, and it would take the discipline of Stoicism to learn far more about the positive side.

I began to see more and more how deeply thinking shapes living, and how powerful habit is at solidifying such thinking. I saw how harmful my earlier bitterness had been, and I saw how beneficial my later acceptance was starting to be. It sometimes felt like I was transforming the world itself, though I was actually just doing a thorough rebuilding of myself, and how I looked out at that world.

Keeping those thoughts constant throughout the day, and not just as a luxury for times of leisure and reflection, has always been a key element for me. At first I would need to deliberately, sometimes quite forcefully, push certain values into the front of my awareness when I faced a difficulty. As time went on, however, these became more of a second nature, and they could arise spontaneously.

The examples of good thoughts Marcus Aurelius offers are ones I have always needed to remember.

It is always within my grasp to live with excellence, regardless of where, or under what conditions, that might be. Once I brag or complain about my surroundings, I have succumbed to my surroundings. I know I am on the right track when I see how luxury can be just as much of a hindrance as poverty, if only I permit it to do so.

I am able to live with excellence only because I can keep in mind the very purpose for which I exist. If I am acting to acquire, to consume, or to be gratified, I am forgetting that purpose. The right reason for choice and action must always be there in my immediate awareness, and I must not allow anything else to sway me.

Through all of this, while Stoic principles proceed from self-reliance, I must never confuse such an independence of thinking with an isolation or separation from others. Because I am a creature of reason, I can understand how my own purpose is joined with the purpose of my neighbor. We are made for cooperation, not conflict; we are here to assist one another, not to fight one another.

Always discerning the difference between greater and lesser things, in every situation, is necessary if I wish to have right thoughts lead to right action.

5.17

To seek what is impossible is madness, and it is impossible that the bad should not do something of this kind.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.17 (tr Long)

I have to squirm when I think of all the time I have wasted in wanting the world to change for me. Why did this have to happen? Why did it all go one way instead of another? Why can’t this or that person just be better?

The time would have been far better spent improving myself, which is quite possible, than trying to determine the world, which is quite impossible.

There will always be selfish, dishonest, and abusive people, because we are rational creatures, and rational creatures act from their own judgments. We will always choose what we think to be best for us, and where there is the possibility of a good choice, there is also the possibility of a bad choice. I cannot insist on the freedom of my own actions, while at the same time denying it to others, however mistaken I may think they are in their decisions.

I should also not think that Nature somehow made a mistake in allowing this state of affairs. Everything within the whole will act for the sake of the whole, even when the order behind this purpose is not immediately apparent to me. Providence will permit things that may seem wrong to me, but I must remember that any circumstance, however disturbing, can be an opportunity for good.

This is especially fitting within the Stoic model of virtue, because what is good within my life, and how I fulfill my part within the world, will depend only on what I make of things, not what they make of me.

When I see another trying to do me harm, I should not despair that all will be lost, or think that Providence is in error, or even wish that it were not so. I must remember that everything is as it is for a reason, and this includes how human freedom is itself a part of Providence.

The person who tries to do me harm will, of course, really only harm his own character, while at the same time giving me the means to build my own, by responding to evil with good. In this way, something wrong is transformed into something right. Instead of seeing only doom and gloom when my neighbor acts poorly, I must think how I can turn it around to act well. In so doing, I may also help the bad man, as well as helping myself.

The way I choose to think and live and the way another chooses to think and live are already a part of the way all things are meant to be. There can, I believe, be a profound sense of gratitude from being given the power to rule myself, and a profound sense of reverence from knowing that my own power participates fully in a greater harmony of purpose.

How foolish to wish it to be different than it should be.

5.18

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by Nature to bear.

The same things happen to another, and either because he does not see that they have happened, or because he would show a great spirit, he is firm and remains unharmed.

It is a shame, then, that ignorance and conceit should be stronger than wisdom.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.18 (tr Long)

The Stoic will find contentment in the fact that he comes equipped to provide for his own happiness, and that he may always make good out of any circumstance.

Could the things that happen to me take away my property, my pleasure, or my position? Could the things that happen to me even take away my very life? Yes, and they most certainly will, to one degree or another, and at one time or another. Yet none of these things are the measure of my life. Reason informs me of this, and serenity follows from this.

Now while the Stoic may give the appearance of strength, not all who give the appearance of strength are necessarily Stoic. The dignity of action is not simply in its outward signs, but in its inward disposition. As Marcus Aurelius points out, some people seem to possess endurance, but they may possess it for very different reasons.

Sometimes our ignorance will make us thoughtless, careless, or completely indifferent to what is happening. We then stumble through life unaffected by things, because we are unaware of what they actually mean. This is hardly Stoic.

Sometimes our arrogance will make us think that we are invincible, and that we must be strong in order to live up to a special image of ourselves. We then smash our way through life unaffected by things, because we believe we are better than those things. This, too, is hardly Stoic.

The man who drinks poison because it tastes sweet is a fool, not a Stoic. The man who faces danger to impress himself and others is vain, not a Stoic.

It may seem wrong that ignorance and pride appear more powerful than wisdom and virtue, but I would suggest that while they may give the impression of power, they are, of course, completely lacking in any power of character. Perhaps the irony is that only foolish and vain people would even begin to confuse such things.

I remember a time when I won a soccer game by blindly kicking the ball at the last second. I had no clever plan, no skillful play in mind, and I wasn’t aiming anywhere at all, yet it went into the corner of the goal. For a short time after that, my skill and strength were praised.

Dumb luck isn’t strength.

I remember another time when I passed an oral exam by appearing confident. I was well aware that I didn’t know the material as well as I should, but I replied to every question with a cocky insistence that the question was misleading or misguided. The examiners fell for it, and for a short time after that, my knowledge and insight were praised.

Presumption isn’t strength.

I would have been a much stronger fellow if I had admitted I didn’t have a clue about what I had done, or admitted I didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.

5.19

Things themselves do not touch the soul, not in the least degree, nor do they have any admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul.

But the soul turns and moves itself alone, and whatever judgments it may think proper to make, such it makes for itself the things that present themselves to it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.19 (tr Long)

In middle school, I was once surrounded by a bunch of barbarians during lunch. No, they weren’t wielding axes and maces, or wearing helmets with horns on them, but they were barbarians just the same.

I was a timid, weak, and scrawny fellow, so I knew what I had coming to me. I had never read a bit of Stoicism at that point, though I did have the benefit of the wisdom given to me by my family. I prepared for the worst.

“You can’t hurt me,” I cried.

“Yeah? We’ll beat the shit out of you, you little faggot. Will that hurt?”

This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. It had become a regular occurrence over the years, and in a more refined and professional form, it became a regular occurrence for many years to come. It still happens today. The assaults just became verbal instead of physical.

Even then, I knew that they were wrong in what they did, so I tried to find something right from what I did.

“You’re better than me. Prove it.”

They did indeed prove it, on their own terms.

This is exactly what life throws at us. Those who do these things probably have no idea how they are hurting others, and I suspect they don’t even care.

All I have is to decide what to make of the hurt. There is the key.

I had spent too much time dwelling on the pain in my circumstances, in my reputation, in my body, and in my feelings. For myself, however, it was easier to take a kick in the groin than a kick to my confidence. I could easily bear physical pain, but I somehow couldn’t handle emotional pain.

Why not apply the same standard, I thought? Both kinds of suffering come from the outside, not from the inside. Both kinds of suffering are received from others, not given by me. Both kinds of suffering are the result of what is thought about me and done to me, not about what I think and do for myself.

There is then a brilliant moment of realization. There is indeed something about me that no one can ever hurt, about who I am, and not what others tell me that I am. You can’t touch that. It’s mine, and only mine. I will keep a tight hold on it, not out of arrogance, but from a sense of responsibility. My thoughts and choices are my own, not yours.

If you try to harm me, you can certainly take my body, my property, or my reputation. I might even throw them your way to keep you occupied, like a dog with a bone. You will never take my soul. The more you push at it, the stronger it gets.

You can’t hurt me. You are pissing into the wind whenever you try to prove that you can. You only make yourself worse when you try to please yourself in that way, because I rule myself without condition. How will you choose to rule yourself?

The old family wisdom was completely right.

5.20

In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far as I must do good to men and endure them.

But so far as some men make themselves obstacles to my proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things that are indifferent, no less than the sun, or wind, or a wild beast.

Now it is true that these may impede my action, but they are no impediments to my affects and disposition, which have the power of acting conditionally and changing, for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid.

And so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act, and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.20 (tr Long)

Marcus Aurelius often speaks of man’s social nature, and how creatures endowed with reason are inherently ordered toward cooperation and mutual respect. It is the virtue of justice that should rule our relationships with others, giving to each his due, in the recognition that we all share the same dignity and purpose.

I am always saddened to see people treat one another poorly, most especially when they claim to seek virtue. Yet I must understand that the power to choose virtue will also include the power to choose vice. How should I go about dealing with someone who would treat me unfairly, try to do me harm, or tempt me away from living well?

I must surely still desire what is good for him, and assist him in whatever way is possible to find his own happiness. Yet insofar as his words and deeds may become a hindrance to my own character, I must be completely indifferent to them. I should treat his actions as neither good nor bad in themselves, but rather ask myself how whatever he has said or done, however he intended it, can help me to improve myself.

It is not what he has done that is good or bad for me, but how I make something of it that is good or bad for me.

While another may hinder what is outside of me, he cannot hinder what is inside of me. Not only can his actions not control my judgment, but I can in turn also transform his action through my judgment. What was supposed to do harm can be turned into something of benefit, depending entirely upon what I do with it.

Will you speak dishonestly? I will confront it, and try to reply honestly. Will you take what isn’t yours? I will confront it, and try to give of myself. Will you act with hate? I will confront it, and try to respond with love. This helps me to become better, and may also help you to make yourself better.

The stumbling block can become the stepping-stone.

I had a math teacher many years ago, a nun who was tough as nails but with the biggest heart. She had a poem by R.L. Sharpe, called “A Bag of Tools”, on her classroom wall. I think of the poem, and I think of her, very often:

Isn't it strange how princes and kings,

And clowns that caper in sawdust rings,

And common people, like you and me,

Are builders for eternity?

Each is given a list of rules;

A shapeless mass; a bag of tools.

And each must fashion, ere life is flown,

A stumbling block, or a stepping-stone.

5.21

Reverence that which is best in the Universe, and this is that which makes use of all things and directs all things.

And in like manner also reverence that which is best in yourself, and this is of the same kind as that.

For in yourself also, that which makes use of everything else is this, and your life is directed by this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.21 (tr Long)

This was a passage I originally glossed over, because I foolishly assumed it wasn’t really telling me anything new. Yes, I thought, Divine Reason directs all things, just as my own reason directs me. Got it.

But when I returned to it later, and gave myself time to reflect on both its breadth and depth, I was overcome by a certain sense of awe and gratitude. I felt wonder at how closely my humanity participated in Divinity, and I felt profound thanks to be given the chance to do so.

I have often felt so separated from the things around me, and from the order that ties all things together. It is a form of feeling lonely, but also a deeper isolation from existence itself. There were my thoughts, the thoughts of others that seemed so alien to me, and the thought of God that seemed so far above and beyond me. Each was in its own box.

But mind, thinking, awareness, or consciousness, whatever we wish to call it, is never something that is separated from things. By its very definition, it reaches out to other things, grasps them, and, in a sense, comes to contain them within itself. Thought is always what is “out there” becoming present “in here”, and vice versa.

I realized I could look at this from two directions, from the top down or from the bottom up. The first appealed more to my theoretical side, the second more to my practical side.

First, I could begin with the Universe itself. Nature reveals order and purpose, and order and purpose reveal design, and design reveals Mind. Each thing plays its role, in its own way, in a balanced relationship with every other thing, through a process of change, of action and reaction. I myself am a piece of this process, though in a special way, because the order of Reason in all things is mirrored in my own order of reason. I share directly with all of Nature when I discover meaning and direction within my own particular nature.

Second, I could begin with just myself. I perceive that I am a being that not only acts, but is also reflectively aware of his own actions, and by that awareness directs those very actions. I also cast that awareness to what is outside of me, and I see other things being acted upon, and other minds, precisely like my own, acting upon them. I can proceed from what is proximate to what is ultimate, to recognize how just as all of my parts are ruled through my mind, all things as parts of a whole are ruled through Mind.

Human mind and Divine Mind exist in different degrees, but they are all aspects of exactly one and the same thing. The lower is an emanation, so to speak, of the higher.

From a Christian perspective, for example, I was always taught that man is made in the “image and likeness” of God.

When I later learned about Vedanta Hinduism, I was taught Tat Tvam Asi, “Thou art That”, how Atman, the principle of self, is Brahman, the universal principle.

When I tried to understand Taoism, I was advised to see myself as a microcosm of the Universe, to discover that the Tao, the way or path, within me flows and proceeds from the Tao of all things. From Tao Te Ching 54:

Cultivate the Tao within oneself; and one's virtue will be perfected.

Cultivate it within the household, and one's virtue will be abundant.

Cultivate it within the neighborhood, and one's virtue will be enduring.

Cultivate it within the nation, and one's virtue will be overflowing.

Cultivate it within the entire world, and one's virtue will be universal.

I am reminded of all these different expressions of truth when I read Marcus Aurelius on the unity between my own ruling principle and the ruling principle of everything. For too long, I always separated them from one another, and did not recognize their deeper complementarity.

5.22

That which does no harm to the state, does no harm to the citizen.

In the case of every appearance of harm apply this rule: if the state is not harmed by this, neither am I harmed.

But if the state is harmed, you must not be angry with him who does harm to the state. Show him where his error is.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.22 (tr Long)

I was confused, from early on, about two specific sorts of behavior that have always seemed to be quite socially acceptable. Age and experience have only made me scratch my head all the more.

First, people will often measure the good in life like a balance sheet of debits and credits. They will commit lesser evils, or permit lesser evils, if they perceive a greater profit from them as a whole. They believe that a smaller wrong is excused by a larger right. The ends justify the means.

Second, people will often assume it is appropriate to hurt the people they think have hurt them. It is completely wrong to do harm, except when harm has already been done, in which case it is a right to do harm in return. They believe that violence is excused as a response to violence. Again, the ends justify the means.

This passage helps me to come to terms with both of these oddities.

First, there can never be any good for the whole at the expense of the part, and there can never be any good for the part at the expense of the whole. It all goes together. At no point should I think that going against Nature supports Nature. It’s a package deal.

Second, there can never be any good for the first fellow at expense of the second fellow, and there can be never be any good for the second fellow at the expense of the first fellow. It all goes together. At no point should I think that going against Nature supports Nature. It’s a package deal.

These actually turn out to be the same issue, just with different expressions. Nothing ever gets better by making it worse.

I can’t say, for example, that I am doing good for the whole community by doing harm to any of its members, and if someone does do harm to the community, I should correct and improve him, instead of hurting him out of vengeance.

Though this has long seemed clear to me, I regularly deal with people for whom the concept seems completely alien.

I once taught at a school where an important administrator would speak regularly about firing employees. Out of frustration, I once simply asked him why he was so keen on the idea of taking away people’s jobs, and whether there might be better ways to solve problems.

“Well, it’s for the good of the school. I care about the school. It’s like a family to me.”

“If your son does something to annoy you, do you kick him out of the family? Is it for the good of the family to hurt some members and not others?”

“Well, that’s different. I have to live with my family! Don’t be stupid!”

I realized there was no point reminding him that we have to live with all of the people around us, not only the ones we prefer.

I suspect that those who think we can dispose of a few for the many, of some for others, are trapped in an attitude of “us” and “them”, of constant conflict, where there really is no awareness of the good of the whole at all.

How wonderful it is that the Stoic must never think of his own benefit in opposition to the benefit of others. For him, these things are one and the same.

5.23

Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear, both the things that are and the things that are produced. For substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties, and there is hardly anything that stands still.

And consider this that is near to you, this boundless abyss of the past and of the future in which all things disappear.

How then is he not a fool who is puffed up with such things, or plagued about them, and makes himself miserable? For they vex him only for a time, and a short time.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.23 (tr Long)

I once grew impatient and frustrated with this sort of passage, complaining that it all seemed to be about making myself feel insignificant, and ignoring my happiness. I found myself answering my own objection, since there was no one else around to listen. Perhaps it is actually about making my apparent problems seem insignificant, so that I can then pay proper attention to my happiness.

We say it far more often than we mean it, or even understand it, but things only make sense from the right perspective. As circumstances become larger or smaller in my estimation, they become more or less important in the order of my priorities. It can, therefore, be of great help to measure with the proper scale. Things that seemed so overwhelming can suddenly become a trifle, and what I had overlooked can suddenly become quite relevant.

When I have felt physical pain from something like a toothache, for example, the expectation that it will pass can help make it bearable. The suffering may feel intense, but it grows smaller within the larger context of time.

I can do much the same with the obnoxious neighbor, the demanding boss, or the thoughtless friend. How meaningful is this, after all, in the picture of the whole? Knowing it to be only a tiny bit, however annoying, in the fullness of life, is it worth all the attention, and thereby making it far more important than it really is?

It can even work with the situations that seem far more imposing. I remember the moment when I realized it was quite likely I would suffer from the Black Dog for the rest of my life. I had now been waking up most every morning for fifteen years, filled with those crippling feelings, and I was slowly becoming more adept at managing them.

Look, I’ve done this for years now. What are a few years more? What is any of this really in the big picture? There is the infinite in every direction, the flow of constant change, and here I am, fretting about how some little demons in my soul, or chemicals in my head, are messing around with my mood.

Yes, it hurts. Now look at everything else that is good, beautiful, and pleasant in this wide world, in the whole pattern of Providence, whether far away or right outside my window. It still hurts, but it puts the hurt in context. I will only neglect my own happiness when I attend more to inferior things, and thereby attend less to superior things.

Some may think this nonsensical, but speaking only for myself, I have found there is no better anti-depressant than putting things into perspective. It isn’t that I’m unimportant, but rather that the things I worry so much about are really unimportant. Now I can get on with the business of living for what matters. I can begin to find joy in what I do, not misery in relying on what may be done to me.

Ah, Casablanca, your script seems to produce more Stoic gems every time I look:

I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

And that, I suggest, is why Rick can be completely content with himself at the end of the film, while he was completely lost at the beginning.

5.24

Think of the Universal Substance, of which you have a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to you; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it you are.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.24 (tr Long)

Again, this isn’t about feeling insignificant because I’m small, but about finding my significance in what is big.

I can be both proud and humble when I understand my part within the whole. I become arrogant or insecure when I either reject the whole or reject my part. Who I am, and how I matter, will only make sense to me in the context of how everything works together. If I lose track of that measure, I will sway between thinking too much or too little of myself.

Yes, I am only a tiny bit of something so much bigger, a dab of paint on the canvas, a single thread in the tapestry. But what a true work of art I am a part of! The position of the self within the world is the only thing that can give meaning to the self.

When they first tried to teach me something about art history, I was quite taken with a painting by Piero della Francesca, The Flagellation of Christ. Three figures are gathered together in the foreground, seemingly oblivious to Jesus being scourged in the background. It made me think about what really was big and small in this life.

Now I have heard all sorts of theories about the artist’s intentions, about who the three figures were, and about all sorts of hidden meaning. All I knew was that I was supposed to be paying attention to a central event in the salvation of mankind, and all I could look at were these three well-dressed fellows having a casual chat. I felt a little guilty about this, somewhat selfish, for dwelling on the mundane over the sacred.

So it is in much of life. I spend so much of my time concerned with myself and with the things immediately surrounding me, with all of my everyday worries, and I completely forget to look at the whole. I make more of what is less, and less of what is more. I develop a skewed perspective, where the nearness of something to me is confused with its importance.

If I can begin to step back, and take in the whole picture, I will learn to think less of myself, while at the same time discovering everything about myself. I will find my place, and for me that means I will be home. The great fullness of being, the vast expanse of time, and the profound workings of Providence are the setting in which my life, however small and humble, must embrace its purpose.

5.25

Does another do me wrong? Let him look to it. He has his own disposition, his own activity.

I now have what the Universal Nature wills me to have, and I do what my nature now wills me to do.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.25 (tr Long)

How many of my problems, how much of my frustration and disappointment, would cease immediately if I only learned to rule myself, to let others rule themselves, and to let Nature play herself out as she intends?

This is a game changer. It frees me from so much of what burdens me, and frees me for so much of what I was made to be. So what’s stopping me?

When I first read this passage, I pondered all the possibilities, but it took me a while to wonder why I seemed afraid of the actualities.  Old habits are hard to break, and the Stoic Turn, in any of its aspects, is hardly just cosmetic. It is a fundamental change of priorities, and therefore a completely new way of living.

Responsibility is liberating, but it can also seem quite frightening. Marcus Aurelius is telling me that what I think and do is my concern. What the people around me think and do is their concern. Nature gives us everything we need to do all of these things rightly. It is liberating, because nothing is hindering me from living well, but it is frightening, because there are no longer any excuses for living poorly.

I think of how often I have run for cover, to make my own weakness seem to be the weakness of someone or something else. They don’t respect you, so it’s all their fault. She lied to you, so it’s all her fault. I got sick, so it’s all the world’s fault.

Now everyone and everything around me will indeed act upon me, but the only thing that defines my own happiness or misery is how I act for myself. There is no getting around the profound power of that realization.

I will further need to redefine my very sense of success, of what is really mine and what isn’t, of my social standing, of what makes someone a friend. In a world where most of us will let our circumstances determine us, the Stoic may at best seem eccentric, at worst downright dangerous and insane. These are not easy steps to take.

All the hesitation should surely disappear when I observe the sense of peace that such thinking will bring. I can care for others, I can act for their good, and I can give them my respect, but I do not need to make my own dignity dependent on whether they care for me, act for my good, or give me any respect.

Let me be accountable for myself, and as for all the rest, I can learn to simply let it be.

5.26

Let the part of your soul that leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or of pain. And let it not unite with them, but let it circumscribe itself and limit those affects to their parts.

But when these affects rise up to the mind, by virtue of that other sympathy that naturally exists in a body that is all one, then you must not strive to resist the sensation, for it is natural.

But let not the ruling part of itself add to the sensation the opinion that it is either good or bad.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.26 (tr Long)

I long ago lost track of how many times people have told me that Stoicism is cold, heartless, or denies the value of our feelings. This is sadly what the word has come to mean in daily use, yet this confuses the man who orders his emotions with the man who denies his emotions.

It is ironic that the people I know who genuinely live in a Stoic manner, those who don’t just mouth the fancy words but embrace the spirit of the task, are some of the most deeply feeling people I’ve ever met. They will have an intense sense of compassion, even empathy, for others, and whether they are reserved or outgoing, will be profoundly conscious of their own feelings and the feelings of others.

What will make them so different from others, however, is not that they are passionate, but how they always strive to be the masters of their feelings. They will neither let themselves be tossed around by their emotions, pulled this way and that, nor suppress or ignore them. They will accept what they feel, they will seek to understand it, and then they will use the power of their judgment to put it in its proper place. They will feel pleasure and pain, though they will not assume that these impressions are in themselves beneficial or harmful, or have any direct control over our estimation.

However they may express it, in Stoic language or in different terms, such people understand that the heart will feel, while the mind must guide those feelings. They recognize themselves as beings of both reason and passion, where the latter must be in the service of the former.

Marcus Aurelius explains that the problem is never in having emotions at all. It is right and natural to feel, and sometimes to feel very strongly.  As they say, real men aren’t afraid to cry. The problem is when we judge poorly about them, and do not allow our understanding to make good use of them. The passions are not good or bad, but only what I choose to do with them is good or bad.

In the Phaedrus, Plato uses the allegory of a chariot to describe the human soul. The charioteer represents the mind, while the horses represent our instincts and passions. A similar image is employed in the Katha Upanishad:

Know that the Atman (self) is the driver and the chariot,

and the body is the chariot.

Know that the Buddhi (intelligence, ability to reason) is the charioteer,

and Manas (mind) is the reins.

The senses are called the horses,

the objects of the senses are their paths.

Formed out of the union of the Atman, the senses and the mind,

him they call the "enjoyer".

Just as the driver can direct the power of the horses under his control to get to his destination, so the mind can direct the power of impressions to live well. Just as the driver who cannot tame his horses will be thrown or dragged about, the mind that cannot tame the passions will be thrown or dragged about.

I am most certainly a creature of feeling, and this has its rightful place. I am also a creature of reason, and this has its rightful place. All is well when the driver leads the horses, but things will end poorly when the horses lead the driver.

5.27

Live with the gods.

And he does live with the gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all that the daemon wishes, which Zeus has given to every man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself.

And this is every man's understanding and reason.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.27 (tr Long)

The matter of religion, and religious practices, can get people quite worked up. Perhaps only questions of politics are more troublesome.

I have found that there is a good reason for this. Religious faith is about what is ultimate, and at the same time it is also deeply personal. This can be an explosive mixture. It furthermore doesn’t help us when appeals to faith are sadly so often characterized by their hypocrisy instead of their sincerity.

But I can rest assured that Marcus Aurelius isn’t trying to proselytize or get his hands on my donation, because he describes the root of piety in a manner that is honest, simple, and universal.

The pious man is happy to live with Providence.

The pious man follows the guidance of his reason, and of his conscience.

In both of these things, he shows reverence for the Divine, however he may choose to understand it. He recognizes that he is a part of something greater than himself, and that his own good participates in the good of all things. He also recognizes that he is given a great gift, and a great responsibility, in having the power of understanding. He knows his every action must be in harmony with the benefit of the whole.

The Divine that made him is also present within him, because he can order his own life through his use of reason, just as all of Nature is ordered through Divine Reason.

I had the great benefit of being raised with religion that was never about posturing or manipulation, though I learned very quickly that many others saw it quite differently. As I grew older, I would ask myself, “How is this right for me?” There was a certain moment, however, when I saw that this wasn’t exactly the best way to ask the question. I should rather simply be asking, “How is this right?”

The difference was not just thinking of myself, but rather also thinking of myself in relation to all other things. It was about how I worked in the context of how the world worked. I should be willing to play my part, and do so with a sense of accountability, knowing that it was my own reason that could guide the way.

My grandmother would sometime scold me with the saying, “Use the mind that God gave you!” It would make me grimace then, but it makes me smile now.

5.28

Are you angry with him whose armpits stink? Are you angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will this danger do you? He has such a mouth, he has such armpits. It is necessary that such an emanation must come from such things.

But the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able, if he takes pain, to discover wherein he offends. I wish you well of your discovery. Well then, and you have reason. By your rational faculty stir up his rational faculty; show him his error, admonish him. For if he listens, you will cure him, and there is no need of anger. Neither tragic actor nor whore. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.28 (tr Long)

Philosophy can hardly get more gritty and practical than this.

I will find myself distracted by negativity and petty criticisms from others, and then I must remind myself to not let my frustration itself become a form of negativity and petty criticism. It is easy to condemn and dismiss, difficult to understand and accept.

I am tempted to feel resentment over the smallest things in others, because I wish to ignore taking responsibility for myself. By expecting the world to give me the things that I assume are good, and sparing me from the things that I assume are bad, I will make dramatic complaints about what I consider indecent on the outside of me, while being rather indecent on the inside of me.

Do I find something offensive? I need to remember that nothing offends in and of itself, and I am the one who chooses to take such offense. It is much like boredom. Things aren’t boring, but I decide that I am bored by them. Things will be as they are, according to their own natures, and my like or dislike of them is neither here nor there.

The man whose habits, or appearance, or odor disturb me has done me no wrong. I am only doing myself wrong by being angry, or rolling my eyes, or gritting my teeth, or making insulting comments behind his back.

But perhaps I am convinced he really does wrong. Doesn’t he know better? Perhaps, instead of showing him disrespect, I can help him to understand. We both possess the power of reason, and I can hardly expect him to exercise his reason if I will not exercise mine. As in the Apology, Socrates reminded the Athenians that they should educate an ignorant man, not harm him.

I must either accept a man for who he is, or I must help him to make himself better. Anything else is whining, or just more vice on my part.

For many years now, attendance at professional meetings has often been a trial for me. The speaker is usually talking down to me, and the people around me are usually making fun of the speaker. I find myself annoyed by it all, and feel that my time is being wasted. There can be quite a bit of posturing and dismissiveness all around.

Here is a perfect opportunity, however, to put simple Stoic values to the test, and to make something good of what I falsely assume is bad. Other people will have their own estimations, and my frustration is only within my estimation. This helps me to rule myself. If I am sure that a mistake is being made, then I can act and speak like a social animal, with respect, solidarity, and reason, not like a hyena, cackling and skulking about. Whenever I see something I don’t like, there is an opportunity to order my own thinking, or to assist another in ordering his own thinking.

Our social nature asks us to stand with people, not against them.

5.29

As you intend to live when you are gone out, so it is in your power to live here. But if men do not permit you, then get away out of life, yet do so as if you were suffering no harm.

The house is smoky, and I quit it. Why do you think that this is any trouble?

But so long as nothing of the kind drives me out, I remain, I am free, and no man shall hinder me from doing what I choose; and I choose to do what is according to the nature of the rational and social animal.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.29 (tr Long)

Some people speak only about how much better life will be when it’s over. Others cling to life frantically, as if survival were the only measure of living. Some can’t wait to die, because the here and now isn’t good enough for them, while others can’t bear the thought of dying, because there is nothing except the here and now for them. The Stoic may look on with some confusion, not sure what all the fuss is about.

There is no need to either run from life or cling to life. I shouldn’t have to look forward to a better time, since I can make this a better time. I shouldn’t be afraid to lose this time, since how well I can live is never determined by how long I can live.

The Stoic will not pray for death, and he will not fear death. Death is indifferent, a completely natural occurrence, that is not in itself good or bad; it is only good or bad in what we make of it. The Stoic can think this way not because he is careless or heartless, but because he understands that quality takes precedence over quantity.

I am given some time, however long or short, and the value of my life will come from my actions, how fully I live according to wisdom and virtue. More or less time will not change how well or how poorly I choose to do this. I can be content with this, at any given moment, and I need not ask for anything else.

Why put it off until tomorrow? I can do it now, which is all I am sure to have. Am I given another day? Good, then I will do my best on that day as well. Is it time for it to end? That will also be fine, as I can be content that my part was well played.

Someone or something can take my life, can force me out, and then it is time to go. I will only hesitate if I have cared for all the wrong things. While I am still here, it is completely within my power to act from good character, and anything that is done to me can only be a further opportunity to practice it.

I think of all the people I have known who have died, and those who accepted their deaths without complaint or regret were almost always the same ones who had lived their lives committed only to living well. Because they judged themselves by how they loved others while they lived, they had no reason for feeling loss as they died.

When the house gets too smoky, it’s time to leave.

5.30

The Intelligence of the Universe is social. Accordingly, it has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has fitted the superior to one another.

You see how it has subordinated, coordinated, and assigned to everything its proper portion, and has brought together into concord with one another the things which are the best.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.30 (tr Long)

While we Moderns have knowledge of the natural world that would have amazed the Ancients, the Ancients had something that we too often neglect. They sought to understand the identity of things within the context of order and purpose, and therefore as an expression of harmonious design. We seek out the structure of matter and the laws by which it moves, while they also sought out the essence of things and their ultimate ends. Their world was not just a place where “stuff happened”. It was a world woven from intertwined strands of meaning.

In Aristotelian terms, while we Moderns, following Francis Bacon, perceive efficient and material causes, the Ancients also perceived formal and final causes. It isn’t just about matter moving about, but matter given form, directed toward a goal.

The whole Universe is, in this sense, social, because each and every thing plays a part within the balance and relationship of the whole. Things that are less perfect exist for the sake of things that are more perfect, and things that are more perfect exist for the sake of one another. A hand or a foot serves a man, and men mutually serve one another.

I will sometimes feel as if I am in constant conflict with things in the world, and always struggling with others. Events and circumstances seem to go against me. The people who should be friends and neighbors seem more like enemies and competitors. I then remind myself that this impression comes only from letting my passions blind the clarity of my thinking. In both the bigger picture and the smaller picture, for the cosmos as a whole and for the rational and social animals that live within it, every aspect is balanced with every other.

I lose track of the role I must play when I feel resentment for the role everything else must play. I get back on track when I commit myself to my part, and can thereby accept, respect, and trust in the purpose of the other parts.

When I was a child, I always enjoyed simply observing different instances of cooperation, things such as the way water and rocks act upon one another, or the interplay of bees and flowers, or the harmony of different players in an orchestra. One of my favorite assignments in elementary school had been making a colorful poster displaying the overlapping water, carbon, and nitrogen cycles.

Whenever I now observe the things in life that seem harsh, conflicting, or severe, I turn back to those fond memories. Something may diminish or cease to be, but wherever there is a lessening in one part, there is an increase in another, and wherever there is an ending, there is also a new beginning. Nothing is in vain, since everything is relational and social.

5.31

How have you behaved until now to the gods, your parents, brethren, children, teachers, to those who looked after your infancy, to your friends, kinsfolk, to your slaves? Consider if you have until now behaved to all in such a way that this may be said of you:

“Never has he wronged a man in deed or word.”

And call to recollection both how many things you have passed through, and how many things you have been able to endure.

And that the history of you life is now complete and your service is ended, and how many beautiful things you have seen, and how many pleasures and pains you have despised, and how many things called honorable you have spurned, and to how many ill-minded folks you have shown a kind disposition.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.31 (tr Long)

I see around me all the many different ways that people consider their lives to be worth living, and this informs me about whom I should admire as an example, and whom I should be wary of as a temptation.

Many of us look to acquisition, or reputation, or gratification as if they are worthy ends. Instead, Marcus Aurelius here asks me to consider the virtue of my actions themselves as a worthy end, determined by whether or not I have lived with fairness, kindness, appreciation, and self-control.

How have I treated others around me? Have I brought them support and comfort, or rejection and insult? When it is the former, I can be humbly content, but when it is the latter, it is a strong reminder of what remains for me to do. The task is still incomplete.

How have I faced suffering and hardship? Have I risen above it, or allowed it to rule me? Have I made myself better or worse, more caring or uncaring, when things don’t go my way? When it is the former, I can be humbly content, but when it is the latter, it is a strong reminder of what remains for me to do. The task is still incomplete.

My life could quite easily cease right now. Have I been grateful for beauty, or resentful of it? Have I been indifferent to pleasure and pain, or have I allowed myself to be ruled be them? Have I pursued only what is right for its own sake, or have I sought only to be admired for my efforts? The answer to each of these questions will tell me what is done and what is left undone.

Most telling of all for me, have I met with abuse, dismissal, or deception from others in kind, or have I responded with respect, compassion, and integrity? There has been some success here, but also much failure.

I should be happy with the successes, but the failures should not have to make me miserable. The failures will only make me miserable if I do not use them as a means to finally getting it right. Then even the failures will have served what is good, however indirectly, whenever I have tried to fix what I have broken, to make something better of what is worse. 

There came a point of awareness for me, when I could no longer hide away from my mistakes. Feeling ashamed of them, I had long hoped they might disappear if I only ignored them. Yet when I honestly asked myself if I had only sought to do right for others, and the answer was clearly no, I realized I was only compounding the wrong. I needed to use this as an inspiration, as a way to regain the lost ground, as a means to make amends whenever I could, and to start all over again whenever I couldn’t.

Marcus Aurelius asks me to face a soul-searching question. However I may respond to it, I need never be afraid of the answer. I only need to be afraid of what I do with the answer.

5.32

Why should unskilled and ignorant souls disturb him who has skill and knowledge? What soul then has skill and knowledge? That which knows beginning and end, and knows the Reason that pervades all substance, and through all time by fixed periods administers the Universe.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.32 (tr Long)

I will often find myself feeling frustrated and offended when the actions of others are thoughtless and careless. I will then be tempted to act vindictively or dismissively, but both of these responses are themselves thoughtless and careless. They both proceed from a disordered sense of self, an unwillingness to understand myself in right relation to others and to the world around me.

A man will be unskilled in life not because he lacks training in some specific trade, but because he neglects the essential art of acting with character. He will be ignorant in life not because he lacks any formal education, but because he doesn’t know who he is, where he came from, and where he is going. If I strive to attain both skill and wisdom, I should surely know that allowing myself to get upset only weakens my own power to live well. I must remember that a foolish man acts he as he does from a lack of understanding, and my anger will help neither him nor me.

As is so often the case, Marcus Aurelius doesn’t just tell us not to be disturbed, but he offers a very brief yet thorough account of why this should be so. If I am to live well, this is only possible if I grasp my own part within the context of the whole. It isn’t just about me, or about how I feel, or about how I perceive myself to have been wronged.

Everything that happens is according to a universal order and purpose, and it is the wise man that can comprehend, however incompletely, that his own thoughts and actions should be in harmony with Nature, not in conflict with it. If I can respect that there is a reason for why things are as they are, I can then seek out the good in all things.

There are no grounds for being disturbed. There are only grounds for discovering how to freely participate in a greater good for everything.

When I was first asked to read Homer’s Iliad, I rolled my eyes, and was, in a sense, offended that I should have to examine some dusty old text, one I thought irrelevant to my life, and also so difficult to read. It didn’t take long for me to change my tune.

I immediately saw that this was a story with many strands and many themes, but one that stood out for me, time and time again, was the rage of Achilles. Here was a great man, but a man who too often acted only for himself, without seeing the big picture, motivated by vanity instead of wisdom. When he struggles against Agamemnon, when he refuses to fight, when he reacts to the death of Patroclus, or when he denies pity to Hector, he is consumed by selfish passion.

I walked away from that first reading with a profound sense that I always needed to look to origins and ends, and how what I did played into a greater sense of meaning and purpose. I didn’t need to be disturbed by pettiness, or lash out at others, if I could only see beyond myself to the reason that is shared by all.

5.33

Soon, very soon, you will be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name. But name is sound and echo. And the things that are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling, and like little dogs biting one another, and little children quarreling, laughing, and then immediately weeping.

But fidelity and modesty and justice and truth are fled up to Olympus from the widespread earth. What then is there which still detains you here? The objects of sense are easily changed and never stand still, and the organs of perception are dull and easily receive false impressions, and the poor soul itself is an exhalation from blood. But to have good repute amidst such a world as this is an empty thing.

Why then do you not wait in tranquility for your end, whether it is extinction or removal to another state?

And until that time comes, what is sufficient? Why, what else than to venerate the gods and bless them, and to do good to men, and to practice tolerance and self-restraint. But as to everything that is beyond the limits of the poor flesh and breath, to remember that this is neither yours nor in your power.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.33 (tr Long)

Whenever I have asked anyone to read this passage, they usually make it to the bit about weeping, and, if they have the patience, to the bit about the world being an empty thing. Then they stop, shrug, and comment about how they don’t need to be reminded that life is terrible.

No, I will always say, read to the good bit!

Many decades ago, a favorite phrase was “Life sucks, and then you die.” I would impishly reply with “Life only sucks if you’re worried about dying.”

Like any good Stoic, Marcus Aurelius draws attention to the things in life that are vain, shallow, and frivolous. He isn’t trying to get you down. He’s trying to convince you not to worry about the useless things, only so that you can then find happiness in useful things. This over here is completely unimportant, so now go and commit yourself to what is actually important.

I can hardly blame someone for being depressed when he is told that wealth, honor, and pleasure are a waste of time. These are, after all, the very things we’ve been told make life worth living. Make some money, become important, and have some fun, as long as having your fun doesn’t keep you from making money and seeming important. Don’t get caught. Acquire these things, and you will be happy. If I am suddenly told that none of these things are worthwhile, or can give me any contentment, or are even within my power, I will most certainly think that life, as they say, sucks.

I need to be reminded, each and every day, that the conventional wisdom about what matters in life is nothing but conventional ignorance. What kind of fool would believe that the meaning of life rests entirely in receiving things that are completely outside of us, depending only on upon what is given, not upon what we give? It’s no wonder we are so bitter, nasty, and neurotic.

There is another way. I can dispose of my obsession with what is unreliable, and I can hold to what is reliable. I can stop being like a snarling dog or a weeping child. I can make the Stoic Turn, and define my life by what I do, not by what is done to me. I don’t need to be saddened by the emptiness of my circumstances, but I can rather be liberated by not caring for my circumstances.

What remains? I can show reverence to Nature and to Providence, love my neighbor, bear hatred with compassion, and seek to rule no one but myself. These things are completely reliable, because only I will determine them. There is no one who can take them from me. That is why they are the measure of a good life, of a life worth living, of a happy life. Everything else is an accessory.

Yes, caring about what is empty and rotten is a waste of my time. I should care about what is truly sufficient, what is truly my own.

5.34

You can pass your life in an equable flow of happiness, if you can go by the right way, and think and act in the right way.

These two things are common both to the soul of God and to the soul of man, and to the soul of every rational being, not to be hindered by another, and to hold good to consist in the disposition to justice and the practice of it, and in this to let your desire find its termination.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.34 (tr Long)

I very much like the phrase, “to let your desire finds its termination”. Desire is always a want of something, a yearning, and it is fulfilled and completed when its object has been attained. My hunger is satisfied when I have eaten, my curiosity is satisfied when I have understood, or my loneliness is satisfied when I have found a friend.

In the case of my happiness, however, the object of my desire is not something from outside of me at all, but proceeds from the very order of my own thoughts and actions. It is not even a “thing” at all, but a doing, a way of living. Aristotle says, for example, that happiness is not a feeling or a state, not defined by what happens to me, but an activity, defined by the way I live.

The very nature of a rational being is to act through its own judgments, and therefore to live with liberty. The excellence of a rational being is to employ the liberty that comes from judgment in the pursuit of what is true and good, and to always act with a respect for the nature of all other things. A man fulfills his own dignity when he acknowledges the dignity of his fellows, and treats them with justice.

That which completes us, makes us whole, and brings with it serenity and joy in this life is not given to us from without, but flows from within. My own choices are mine alone, and cannot be taken from me. My deeds will only be as noble or base as my thoughts are noble or base.

Happiness will often seem so elusive, something just out of reach. I will only think this, however, if I falsely assume it is something that is acquired through my circumstances. I might think I am happy or sad, content or despondent, depending upon whether I have achieved a certain set of goals out there in the world. Did I get a good job? Do I live in a nice house? Did I marry the right girl? Do my friends respect me? Such things may be preferable to us, but they do not constitute happiness. My happiness follows only from how well I live, with wisdom and with virtue, whatever circumstances may come my way.

I knew many people in college who had a complex plan of life all mapped out, and they were certain that they would be successes or failures by how many of these worldly goals they achieved. These hoops jumped for the best promotions, these contacts made to get ahead, a marriage that supports the best career, strategically placed children, and a home in the best school district to start the cycle all over again.

It was saddening to see so many people defining themselves by what they hoped would come to them, what would somehow happen to them, instead of quite simply saying: “My map of life is to live as a good man, regardless of my conditions.”

Happiness finds its rest, the termination of its desires, through nothing more than my simple choice to live with virtue. Anything that is of benefit to a man proceeds from this.

5.35

If this is neither my own badness, nor an effect of my own badness, and the common good is not injured, why am I troubled about it? And what is the harm to the common good?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.35 (tr Long)

The responsibility for ruling my own character is already quite sufficient for a life that is well lived, and therefore happy. Why must I multiply my worries any further by seeking to be the master of things beyond my power to determine? Why must I confuse conscience with preference?

If I am to take an inventory of all of my frustrations, I discover that most of them follow from trying to take control of things that neither are, nor should be, under my control. I stray from the good life whenever I fret over anything that is beyond my own moral choice to act according to the good of Nature, or whenever I insist that anything I have an inclination for is actually a moral necessity.

My habits of being a busybody, of seeking to arrange all the pieces of my world as I see fit, is the source of so much of my anxiety. If it isn’t about what is right or wrong in my own thoughts and actions, and if it isn’t about how my thoughts and actions conform to the goods of others, then it isn’t any of my business.

This isn’t about not caring. A caring man does not need to be a pushy, bossy, or opinionated man. I should pursue what I know to be right, though never be obsessed with changing things I cannot change. Many years of working with addicts always brings me back to the “Serenity Prayer”:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

and the Wisdom to know the difference

A more comical, though equally helpful, way to keep myself from overreaching my bounds, and thereby avoid becoming a quivering mass of tension, is simply to listen to Monty Python’s “I’m So Worried”:

I'm so worried about what's happenin' today, you know.

And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.

I'm so worried about my hair falling out and the state of the world today.

And I'm so worried about bein' so full of doubt about everything, anyway.

I can then laugh at myself, remember to do what good I can, and let the rest be as it will be. Being troubled by everything only makes me the source of my own grief.

5.36.1

Do not be carried along inconsiderately by the appearance of things, but give help to all according to your ability and their fitness.

And if they should have sustained loss in matters that are indifferent, do not imagine this to be a damage. For it is a bad habit. But as the old man, when he went away, asked back for his foster-child's toy top, remembering that it was just a top, so do you in this case also. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.36 (tr Long)

The seriousness of my care for something will rise or fall with how important I truly think it to be in the order of things. A man who places money first in his priorities will commit all his attention to acquiring and preserving his wealth. A man who places his character first in his priorities will commit all his attention to acquiring and preserving his virtue. He will have very little concern about whether he is rich or poor, but he will have great concern about whether he is good or bad.

When he sees the seeker of truth, the seeker of riches will be quite confused. Why, he asks himself, is this fool strolling past all these wonderful opportunities to possess more? Why would he treat money as such an insignificant thing? So the genuine philosophers, and the Stoic philosophers especially, appear to the world as men gone insane.

Life will throw all sorts of impressions my way, offering many appearances of worth. I must learn to judge these things critically, and to recognize that an appearance is only what something seems like for the moment. I must look behind it, around it, and acquire the right perspective. There is nothing inherently good or bad about how anything looks to me, so I must not allow myself to be carried away by any impression. I must tame it. The way it looks will only become as good or bad for me as I relate it to my priorities, principles and values.

My simple version of this, for those times sudden times I need a quick Stoic jolt, is to say that nothing is ever as bad, or as good, as it looks.

When the world tells me that the appearance of money is good, I don’t need to respond with a craving to possess. When the world tells me that the appearance of popularity is good, I don’t need to respond with a fear of rejection. When the world tells me that pleasure is good, and pain is bad, I don’t need to run toward one and away from the other.

If it is most important in my estimation to be a good man, charged with an informed conscience, I will always treat my neighbor with justice, as much as I am able and as much as it assists him. No outside appearance needs to get in the way of this, because nothing, to me, is greater in measure than true thought and right action.

I can then also look out at the gains and losses of this world, and I will be able to not worry over them. They are indifferent things, and so I will take them or leave them by a very different standard, only by how they can help both others and myself become wiser and better. If they don’t help us with that, they have no worth for me.

I have never been able to find a complete explanation of the example Marcus Aurelius gives, but it is apparently a reference to a comic play of his time, now lost to us. Though I can’t speak for any content in the story, the context should make it clear that this isn’t about a mean old man nastily stealing away a poor child’s toy. He asks for the toy top to be returned, precisely because he knows that in itself it is only a toy, a trifling thing that has little value. The value will only be in what I give it, and how much I choose to let it mean to me.

I am learning to care less about what so many others care more for, and I am willing to gladly let such people have all of their appearances of reward. These appearances are just disposable playthings.

5.36.2

. . . When you are calling out on the Rostra, have you forgotten, man, what these things are?

“Yes, but they are objects of great concern to these people!”

Will you too then be made a fool for these things?

“I was once a fortunate man, but I lost it, I know not how.”

But being fortunate means that a man has assigned to himself a good fortune, and a good fortune is good disposition of the soul, good emotions, good actions.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.36 (tr Long)

I used to be quite impressed, and often intimidated, by the confident rhetoric of important folks. They sounded so wise, and seemed so much better than me. I was certain I could never reach such a height of excellence.

Hard experience slowly taught me two things about such people, and why I was so easily misled. First, they don’t know as much as they’d like you to think. Second, their concern is with the appearance of character, not with the content of character.

This was a burden for me at school, and it remained a burden at work. It was something present in all aspects of social life as well. I began to realize, however, that I would run into two very different types of people in this world, those who were committed to the task of living well, and those who were committed to giving others the impression that they were living well.

The first sort of person doesn’t much care about his image, and that makes him worthy of actual respect. The second sort of person only wishes to be seen in a certain way, whether he is actually worthy of it or not.

One is a characterized by humility and integrity, the other by pride and deception. One will help you because it is right, the other will manipulate you because it is convenient.

When I first read Plato, I saw that the sophists have always been with us. They may be able to speak with great eloquence, and put on fine airs, but it’s all style with no substance. Even as their reasoning is fallacious, their words will tickle the passions. In many cases, the sophists use their skill as a means to acquire great power and influence. There are demagogues, both big and little, who are like pied pipers in the political, religious, and professional realms.

The lure of fame is quite tempting, and its acquisition is rather intoxicating. The remedy lies, as Marcus Aurelius says, in rethinking what truly makes our lives worthy and fortunate.

If I employ sweet words and empty promises to lead people by the nose, I am defining my worth by the approval and praise I hope to receive. It is all an illusion, of course, and in one sense the master has become a slave to his mob.

If, however, I am defining my worth by how I build my own wisdom and virtue, I have made myself fortunate from within, with no need to be approved and praised from without. I won’t need to pander, to play games, or to appear like something I am not.

6.1

The substance of the Universe is obedient and compliant. And the Reason that governs it has in itself no cause for doing evil, for it has no malice, nor does it do evil to anything, nor is anything harmed by it. But all things are made and perfected according to this Reason.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.1 (tr Long)

Whenever we face suffering, we are inclined to think that the world is somehow unfair, broken, or simply messed up. We might speculate that God has made some terrible mistake, or that he takes pleasure in our pain. This may, in turn, lead us to reject the very idea of meaning, purpose, and order in life.

To say, however, that the world has gone bad rests on a certain understanding of good and evil, that some circumstances are beneficial for us, while others are harmful for us. Stoicism suggests a different measure. Things are as they are for a reason, even as we do not always fathom the specifics of the reason. They are, in turn, good or bad for us only insofar as we succeed or fail in making use of them to nurture our own virtue.

If benefit and harm for us are not in what happens, but in what we do with what happens, the world has hardly gone bad. We have rather chosen to take the world badly.

I should not determine my life by what I passively receive, but in what I actively do. There is something deeply liberating, though perhaps also frightening, about recognizing that only I am responsible for what is good or bad in my life, because the value of my life is in my own thoughts and deeds.

With all effects admitting of causes, all causality admitting of order, and all order admitting of design, I can rest assured that everything that is given, however it may at first appear, is an opportunity granted by Providence. That I, and every other rational being, can choose well or choose poorly is also a part of that Providence.

Divine Reason, however I may understand it or speak of it, does not admit of imperfection, because it is itself the source of all expressions of existence, of all modifications of substance, that from which all change proceeds, and that to which all change returns. Ignorance, or indifference, or error, or injustice, or malice, all of which are incomplete, have no place in what is perfectly complete.

I think of how often I have blamed others, or blamed the world, or blamed God for something having gone wrong. I need to rid myself, however, even of the very concept of things going wrong at all. Only I am accountable for what is right or wrong in my life, for that which is within my power.

“She doesn’t love me, so life is unfair.” “It didn’t go my way, so the world is crooked.” I have suffered great pain, so God must hate me.” None of these statements are true for me, because I am falsely presuming that what I receive, my preference, and my pleasure or pain are in any way a standard of good.

Everything that Nature provides, through presence or absence, can be used well.

6.2

Let it make no difference to you whether you are cold or warm, if you are doing your duty.

And whether you are drowsy or satisfied with sleep. And whether ill-spoken of or praised. And whether dying or doing something else.

For it is one of the acts of life, this act by which we die. It is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in hand.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.2 (tr Long)

I often think that our sense of what we consider admirable in others is quite disordered. We praise those who seek first and foremost to rule their circumstances, and we say that they are strong, determined, or brave. At the same time, we have little respect for those who seek first and foremost to rule only themselves, and we say that they are weak, insecure, or timid.

Yet those in the first group are making their lives rise or fall with what is outside of them, and through what is ultimately beyond their power, while those in the second group concentrate on what is within them, and what is rightly under their power. We venerate those who don’t mind their own business of living well, and we dismiss those who do.

By all means, give me worldly achievements and success, but I am a fool if I think these are in any way mine at all, and I am mistaken if I think I am stronger by being enslaved to my circumstances. It is also not necessarily any easier to live life with more external trappings than it is to live with fewer, as anyone who has suffered deeply in prosperity can tell you.

The critical point in life, where the rubber meets the road, is whether or not I will act with conscience and conviction, whatever may happen to come along. I shouldn’t strive to live with more and more, but I should strive to live better and better. Getting more conveniences is a passive reliance, while doing more out of duty is an active commitment.

Being just, kind, or honest doesn’t depend on whether I am warm or cold, rested or tired, esteemed or despised. It doesn’t even depend on whether I am busy living or dying, because the man who lives well will also die well.

I used to roll my eyes when I heard that famous phrase from Lakota Chief Low Dog, “This is a good day to die.” I now appreciate it much more, because I have seen extremes of plenty and of want, of pleasure and of pain, of success and of disappointment, and I recognize that neither one is any better than the other. So too, neither living nor dying are any better. I must only do right with what I have in hand.

6.3

Look within things. Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape you.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6,3 (tr Long)

I am still far too ready to see things only for me, and not in themselves. I look at the appearance on the outside, and consider only what is useful or pleasing to me. I neglect to look at the essence on the inside, at the inherent dignity and purpose of things.

If a Stoic life must be one in accord with Nature, I should not confuse a subjective impression with an objective reality. The identity of anything, and its distinct place in the harmony of all things, remains the same, whether I find it desirable or repugnant, a convenience or a burden. A respect for my own end requires an equal respect for the ends of everyone and everything else around me, existing for their own sake, not merely for my sake.

I can only understand this when I look within. An object in the natural world isn’t just a resource for me, and a person in the social world isn’t just a tool for my profit. Look beyond what it seems, to what it is.

I have often failed to see things for what they truly are, or people for who they truly are. Swept away by my impressions alone, I have used and then abused, acquired and then discarded, wanted at one moment and become indifferent the next. I have filled the world with my waste, and made waste of the people who should fill my world.

It was only through finding myself at the receiving end of much the same thoughtlessness that I could even start to improve myself. Nothing in Nature is ever useless, and no man is ever disposable. This becomes quite clear when one finds himself to be considered useless or disposable.

I have long experienced others only giving me a value based upon how much of an advantage I could be for their own status or gratification. This would often fill me with resentment or despair, but then I began to recognize that my own response was equally based on mere appearance and passion. I can hardly expect others to respect me if I cannot respect them.

The man who can look within, down to the causes, principles and elements, will never reject, ignore, or discard anyone or anything. He will always seek to understand how and why it is the way it is. He will therefore seek to assist Nature on her way, and to love his neighbor as himself.

6.4

All existing things soon change, and they will either be reduced to vapor, if indeed all substance is one, or they will be dispersed.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.4 (tr Long)

There are some things I may want to be different, and there are some things I may want to stay the same. A sign of wisdom is being able to gladly accept that everything will change, whether I wish it to or not, and the only thing that remains reliable as circumstances shift around me is my own commitment to what is within my power, for whatever time I am here.

As I have grown older, my experience of the passage of time has shifted dramatically. Many of us will recall how time seemed to move more slowly when we were younger, precisely because there was less of it to consider, and so everything seemed far more stable. Yet from the broader perspective of age, what once appeared quite large and unassailable now appears quite small and fragile.

This can be of great assistance for me, since I can learn to care less for the passing qualities of life, both the ones I craved and the ones I despised. A pretty face means far less when I learn that looks come and go. A painful wound seems less of a burden when compared to all the other pains, as well as the many joys. Throughout all of this, my character is still mine.

Yet the passage of time can also be a hindrance for me, when I cling to something long gone, and I find it desirable only because it is long gone. Age can also bring with it an unhealthy nostalgia. Again, however, an honest appeal to experience can set this right. I shouldn’t be fooled by an impression of something that is more imagined than real, and I shouldn’t cherry-pick what is pleasant over what is unpleasant. Having seen more of change can indeed provide that fuller perspective.

Whatever the case, seeing things come and go, in greater scope and more rapid succession, should not be about mourning a loss or celebrating a gain. The coming and the going, after all, will happen on its own. The consistency of my own judgment is what can provide continuity to it all, and this requires that I never measure myself by what has been done to me, but by what I am doing right here and now.

I am already forgetting more than I remember, but the other day I had a very vivid realization that most everything I did when I was young, both the achievements and the failures, has left behind virtually no evidence at all. My own memory remains, sometimes blurred, diminished, magnified or contorted over the years, but that too will soon be gone.

Now this might have terrified me at another time, but I actually found the insight to be quite a relief, not because of what was left behind, but because of what remained. It offered me an opportunity to value what did matter, in others, in myself, and for all of Nature when both others and myself have moved along.

6.5

The Reason that governs knows what its own disposition is, and what it does, and on what material it works.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.5 (tr Long)

I will sometimes be quite wary of trusting the judgments of others, because I have seen how often those judgments can be twisted by greed and deception. I am even more likely to be wary of trusting my own judgments, because I have seen how often I have stumbled and fallen. Once bitten, twice shy.

Sadly, I then apply my reservations to the Universe itself, and to the Divine Reason that gives it order and purpose. I perceive that the judgments of other rational creatures, including my own judgments, admit of limits, and can therefore be subject to error. So I then falsely assume that all judgment is limited, and can admit of error.

The crucial difference, however, is that one form of mind is indeed imperfect, while the other is perfect. One is only a particular aspect of being, while the other includes within itself the completeness of all being. For the Stoic, one is a lesser emanation of another that is greater, a specific part within an all-inclusive whole.

I recognize it as a quirk of only my own thinking and writing, but this is why I distinguish between nature and Nature, mind and Mind, reason and Reason.

I should indeed question my own estimation, and the estimation of others. This does not mean I should ever be dismissive, but I should certainly be critical. To be critical of the Reason that rules over all things, however, I need only be critical of my own apprehension of its workings, not that there is a true meaning and purpose to those workings. It is innately lacking in nothing, because it is itself the fullness of everything.

From my own earlier philosophical background, I recall a concept from Fulton Sheen’s God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy, a book that changed my own thinking in so many ways:

The Divine Intellect is a measure, not a thing measured.

The human intellect is a thing measured, not a measure.

On a more personal level, I also often think of a wonderful line by Cardinal Newman, from his prayer “The Mission of My Life”:

He knows what He is about.

Life is certainly full of things that are fallible. I include my own power to choose and act well within that category. But if I always seek to conform my own judgment to the order of Nature, to the design of Providence, and to the workings of Reason, I am approaching, however humbly and fitfully, a completely trustworthy standard. I am working to be in harmony with the whole, in the words of the Chandogya Upanishad, with “the one without a second”.

6.6

The best way of avenging yourself is not to become like the wrongdoer.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.6 (tr Long)

There are many Stoic thoughts and expressions that stick to me like glue, day in and day out, but this one is consistently the most helpful whenever I feel anger.

I have felt hurt, and my base inclination is to repay it in kind. It boils and bubbles under the surface. I become so caught up in my emotional turmoil that I completely lose sight of what is good and evil. Receiving pain, I then assume, requires causing pain, compounded with interest, and fueled by nothing but vengeance.

And all of this occurs only because I have falsely judged that gratification takes precedence over decency.

I am certain that Providence permits me to bear what is bad, only so that I may learn to live by what is good. After all, if something is harmful, I should not cast myself further into it. I should turn the other way.

A few years back, I received an odd message from a fellow I’d known while I was working in social services. He attached a lengthy series of e-mails, and explained in great detail how I should slyly forward this information to destroy the career of someone who had done me great harm in the past. He said he was doing me a favor.

The man was certainly clever, but hardly acting from good will. He put two and two together, and saw a means for promoting himself, without directly involving himself. A check on my part revealed that he was now working for the same state agency that his intended victim worked for. There was obviously much more to the story.

Yet, for a very brief moment, I felt that temptation of power over others. I pondered the sick satisfaction that would certainly come from causing intense suffering, years after I had suffered intensely. I actually considered agreeing to his plan.

I have done some terrible things in my life, and I have entertained twisted temptations. This was, I suddenly realized, the worst of the bunch, and if I allowed myself to succumb to the offer, I would then be a monster who passes all understanding. I would become everything I hated. How could there be any turning back after that?

That smoking gun is surely still out there. Reading those e-mails all the way through made me feel quite sick. Nothing could have been worse, however, than my meeting greed with more greed, hatred with more hatred.

My Uncle Alois would always say, “They already have their reward!” Indeed they do, though it is a self-imposed punishment, and not a reward at all. Another may choose to destroy himself with anger and selfishness, but I can be better. Nature gives me that very chance, every time I feel slighted.

Love is the only answer in the face of hatred.

6.7

Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.7 (tr Long)

The goals I set for myself in this life will reveal most everything about who I truly am. Where there is merely a disjointed catalog of achievements, subject to change as the circumstances move around, there is only confusion and a want of gratification. Where there is constancy, am unwavering attention to what is pure and simple, there is a sincere commitment to character.

I should be rightly concerned when my life begins to take on the appearance of a shopping list. Attend fancy school. Get good grades. Acquire prestigious job. Build financial security. Hold auditions for compatible sexual partner. Develop social network. Adjust mix of priorities as conditions demand.

I should be equally concerned when my sense of what is important essentially shifts with what is popular and fashionable at the moment. I have noticed how certain phrases become temptations for a slide into relativism. It all needs to be modern, relevant, cutting-edge, up-to-date, a blueprint for the next generation.

Now by all means, I may prefer this sort of lifestyle to that, and I may wish to apply what is true and good to the particular mood of the moment. Yet once I lose sight of one guiding principle, universal and subject to no terms or conditions, I have strayed from the path.

Happiness in this life is measured only by the depth of my virtue, treating everyone I encounter with justice and respect, in constant harmony with the order of Providence.

The rest will come and go, rise and fall, but there is the root of contentment. One. Simple. Unchanging. There I can find joy, because joy proceeds from what is complete, lacking in nothing.

Simply as a reflective exercise, but also curious about the results, I once asked a group of graduating college seniors to informally jot down their life goals, their priorities for the future. Most began scribbling furiously, some moving on to a second page quite quickly. They were also quite keen to share their many hopes and dreams with others. There were exciting careers, trips to exotic places, complex plans, and eccentric bucket lists.

Eventually one student, precisely the one I suspected would do so, made a wry comment. “Don’t any of you care about being a decent human being?” A silence fell over the room, and then almost every person wrote down another phrase. When I looked the notes over later, most had “be a good person” crammed into the margins, or listed somewhere after skydiving and seeing a favorite sports team win a title.

I may want to become a rocket scientist, but it takes no rocket science to follow a moral compass in all things.

6.8

The ruling principle is that which rouses and turns itself, and while it makes itself such as it is and such as it wills to be, it also makes everything which happens appear to itself to be such as it wills.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.8 (tr Long)

My thinking and my willing do not change the inherent nature of what is real around me. That is the error of the subjectivist and the solipsist. But my thinking and willing do change how I understand the value of what is around me, and they allow me to actively improve myself, by learning how to make right and proper use of what is around me.

There might, as they say in the old Westerns, be gold in them there hills. It will be there, whether I choose to dig it from the ground or not. A fool ignores the benefit right before him, while the wise man mines every circumstance and every opportunity that come his way. He changes himself by changing how he views his world. He may not become rich by lining his wallet, but he may well become rich by nurturing his very soul. He will decide to become a better man, whatever may happen to present itself.

Some people will try to extract fortune, fame, and pleasure from their conditions. They have decided upon this, because their actions reflect their own estimation of good and evil. Other people will try to extract integrity, character, and compassion from their conditions, because their actions likewise reflect their own estimation of good and evil.

Can’t a man have both? Perhaps, but he can’t serve both equally. One bows to the other. What is indifferent defers to what is necessary.

What will I choose to care about first and foremost? That will be who I am, and it will be all that matters. It will become what I will, not by my having made it as it is, but by my having discovered within it whatever I seek to find.

“I’m going to get what I want!” Good. Now what do I want? Is that truly worthwhile? Am I content to be important, but yet a scoundrel? Or might I be happy to be no one of importance at all, even as I am charged with justice?

I tell myself every day, sometimes every hour: I need to take my pick, and be happy with the consequences.

I appreciate how Marcus Aurelius reminds me that my mind must rouse itself and turn itself. I know the path to take when I see that a life ordered by what is external is a life of allowing myself to be ruled. I become sleepy, and I am being turned. A life ordered by what is internal, however, is a life of ruling myself. I am awake, and I am the one who does the turning.

One man’s riches are another man’s folly.

6.9

In conformity to the Nature of the Universe every single thing is accomplished, for certainly it is not in conformity to any other nature that each thing is accomplished, either a nature which externally comprehends this, or a nature which is comprehended within this nature, or a nature external and independent of this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.9 (tr Long)

We are drawn to dividing things. This is mine, and that is yours. I am right, so you must be wrong. We are better, and you are all worse.

This is a symptom of the deepest dissatisfaction. It is a moral sickness.

Our love of separation even rises up to the lofty realm of metaphysics. I don’t like this world, so there is surely some other, much better, world. Matter is evil, so there must be a more perfect form of spirit. People disturb me, so I will create for myself the idea of a God who promises to remove what is inconvenient to me. My “-ism” is superior to your “-ism”.

Even as hatred fractures, love will always unite.

No decent human being will ever alienate himself from another. So too, nothing in Nature is alien to anything else. It is all one.

There is nothing “out there” that comprehends what is real. There is no one part within the whole that rules the whole. There is nothing external that manages what is internal. There is only what is real, all things joined together, the less perfect ordered toward what is more perfect. One reality, not many realities. There is what is, and anything else is not.

I have struggled to suggest to some that there is indeed a guiding purpose and principle to it all. I have also struggled to suggest to others that this guiding purpose and principle is never something separate, distant, or obscure. I find myself very rarely making any impression on either end. No matter. I am learning to understand, and I wish it for others as well.

One of those most powerful and influential moments of my life was the opportunity to discover a passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions. While all the business, pre-law, and pre-med majors found it clever and amusing, I found it transforming:

And I viewed the other things below You, and perceived that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are they not. They are, indeed, because they are from You. But they are not, because they are not what You are. For that truly is which remains immutably.

Is Divine Reason transcendent or immanent? Yes.

6.10

The Universe is either a confusion, and a mutual involution of things, and a dispersion; or it is unity and order and Providence.

If then it is the former, why do I desire to tarry in a fortuitous combination of things and such a disorder? And why do I care about anything else than how I shall at last become earth? And why am I disturbed, for the dispersion of my elements will happen whatever I do.

But if the other supposition is true, I venerate, and I am firm, and I trust in him who governs.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.10 (tr Long)

The intellectual fashion of the age is to assume that the Universe is random, unaware, and without any inherent purpose. It all happened for no reason, I have often been told, and now it is falling apart. The very meaning of science becomes that there is no objective meaning.

Another model, not in vogue at the moment, suggests it is hardly reasonable to claim that effects can proceed without causes, or that something can come from nothing, or that action is not directed toward an end. Rather, everything is filled with purpose, given order and direction by Providence.

Marcus Aurelius argues, however, that either view should lead us, though for very different reasons, not to worry about the events of our lives, the duration of our lives, or the end of our lives.

If life is nothing but a chaotic expulsion, followed by a gradual decay, then there is little cause for clinging to such an existence. Let it play itself out, perhaps even the quicker the better, and be done with it. Lacking any directed goal, serving no innate function, I may numb myself with gratification, but there will be no ultimate fulfillment. Why worry about it all ending?

If life, however, follows a design, where change is a constant unfolding, and every ending is also a new beginning, there is also little cause for clinging to such an existence. This is not because there is a lack of meaning, but precisely because there is such an abundance of meaning. Whatever may happen, whenever I may come and go, is as it should be. Why worry about it all ending?

Yet whichever camp we may find ourselves in, we still fret, and gnash our teeth, and struggle to hold on. Is that really necessary, whether nothing can make sense, or everything can make sense? I will either muddle my way through the disorder, or I will develop the deepest trust in the presence of order. This or that circumstance, or more or less of living, will make no difference either way.

I may reject Providence, or I may embrace it. The choice will be an expression of my freedom, and it will determine everything else about my own awareness of what is true and good. Even so, neither path requires me to fear death, or to merely survive at any cost.

6.11

When you have been compelled by circumstances to be disturbed in a manner, quickly return to yourself and do not continue out of tune longer than the compulsion lasts; for you will have more mastery over the harmony by continually recurring to it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.11 (tr Long)

I have often felt like I am being swept away by an emotion, or that I am being driven by it. Note, however, that I speak in the passive voice, as if this is only a question of my being acted upon. I forget that my passions do not need to rule me, and that they should rightly be ordered and given meaning by my judgments.

I will not be swept anywhere if I am firmly planted, and I will not be driven if I’m the one who is driving.

Feelings are important, and powerful, aspects of my humanity, and I am well advised not to ignore them, repress them, or think them unimportant. I am also well advised not to let them run away from me.

Any impression, from outside of me or inside of me, can tell me something valuable, if I only try to understand where it is coming from and what it represents. But in itself it is not good or bad, right or wrong. My estimation, my power to comprehend and decide, is what will provide it with meaning, and allow me to find purpose. A feeling will only have as much mastery over me as I am willing to give it.

Whenever I feel as if a passion is about to take control, I can certainly respect its force, while also remembering that I am bigger than it is. I am in charge. Whenever I have already allowed a passion to take control, there is no need to give up. I can return back as swiftly as possible to handling the reins.

The more often I can remember to do this, the better I will become, because both virtue and vice are formed through helpful or harmful habits. A man learns to rule himself through practice, just as a man learns to surrender himself through practice. There is no shame at all in having a feeling, only in judging and acting poorly about it. Even when I do fail in my response, it can still help me to move on to success.

My own temperament has always been markedly melancholic, and many years of bad thinking habits only magnified this. If I felt sadness, I would compound it by choosing to succumb to despair, and I would falsely assume that because I felt something very strongly, there was nothing else I could do.

Yet even as an emotion can be so intimidating, there is always something I can choose to do with it. Sometimes the feeling may pass, and sometimes it may stay right there, but its force can always be redirected. I can become stronger in this through exercise. I can thereby transform a feeling from being an appearance of conflict to being a tool for acting in harmony.

I will, after all, only learn to play an instrument well if I can keep it in tune.

6.12

If you had a stepmother and a mother at the same time, you would be dutiful to your stepmother, but still you would constantly return to your mother.

Let the court and philosophy now be to you stepmother and mother. Return to philosophy frequently and repose in her, through whom what you meet with in the court appears to you tolerable, and you appear tolerable in the court.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.12 (tr Long)

We may think that the court is a thing of the past, where kings and queens paraded about, their retinue jostled for favors, and shifty ministers of state arranged their intrigues. Add some saucy dalliances on the side, and we have all the makings of a gripping historical novel.

The names and faces may be different, but all of this is still thriving. We have just described the workings of most any modern professional institution. I have seen court being held anywhere, from corporate boardrooms and government offices to universities and monasteries. Even the old local pub I once frequented worked precisely along these lines.

We may also think that philosophy is a thing of the past, suitable perhaps for men in togas or poufy wigs who had the leisure to ponder the meaning of life, all the time gazing dramatically into the distance, nodding their heads, and stroking their chins. Our modern world, it would seem, is too busy getting important things done to be so useless.

Remove the silly trappings, however, and man is still as philosophical a creature as he ever was. Few of us may still attempt to write ponderous books of wisdom with impressive titles, but all of us, on each and every day, will go about making judgments of what is true and false, good and bad. That is still an essentially philosophical exercise, however well or poorly we may go about doing it.

In other words, every man attends court, because every man lives in the world, engages in business, and participates in society. Ever man is also a philosopher, in the most immediate and practical sense, because he thinks about the meaning, value, and purpose of how he will go about living in the world.

Now which of these two things needs to come first, just keeping ourselves busy, or understanding what it is worth being busy with? The work of the day, my obligation to the court, is the stepmother. I must be committed to her, and attend to her with care and concern. But my sense of the true and the good, my obligation to philosophy, is the mother. She is the very measure that informs what is worthy within the work of the day.

Respect your stepmother, but respect your mother all the more. Only philosophy can teach me to endure the workings of the court, and only philosophy can teach me to act with justice and decency when I must engage in the business of the court.

6.13

When we have meat and other such eatables before us we receive the impression, that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of a bird, or of a pig.

And again, that this Falernian wine is only a little grape juice, and this purple robe is some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shellfish.

Such then are these impressions, and they reach the things themselves and penetrate them, and so we see what kind of things they are.

Just in the same way ought we to act all through life, and where there are things that appear most worthy of our approbation, we ought to lay them bare and look at their worthlessness, and strip them of all the words by which they are exalted.

For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason, and when you are most sure that you are employed about things worth your pains, it is then that it cheats you most. Consider then what Crates says of Xenocrates himself.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.13 (tr Long)

We may be craving a fine rack of lamb, but may be disgusted when we are told that we are eating a youngster’s corpse. I once turned off a friend from a fancy bottle of wine by suggesting that we were paying quite a handsome sum to consume yeast droppings. An old Austrian joke has it that a man at a restaurant was told that the special for the day was beef tongue. “That’s terrible!” he cried out. “Why would I eat something that’s been in a cow’s mouth? Make me some eggs instead.”

This extends to all aspects of life. We are easily impressed by people’s charm and influence, but sadly disappointed when we discover they are frail, flawed, and broken creatures just like ourselves. We venerate celebrities, and treat them as if they were gods, only to find that they are quite often more like beasts. We worship the power of money, forgetting that running after little pieces of paper, metal, or plastic to acquire more useless trinkets is a rather base affair. We will go to most any ends to have sexual gratification, until we recognize we have been glorifying our own folly.

The outward appearance of something can be quite deceptive. I must seek out an impression of what it really is, down into its constitutive parts, the humble elements out of which it has been arranged. Our vanity has built up how we want it to look, but breaking it down again reveals its true nature.

If I can do this, I need not be consumed by desire, or paralyzed by fear, or riled up in anger. It won’t appear so enticing, threatening, or dangerous if I look at it closely and carefully. Most often, I will find that I am making far more of something than it really is, and attributing far too much value and importance to it. We may give it a prestigious name or title, but the nature is quite commonplace.

We are too easily deceived by illusions, and we harm ourselves greatly when we succumb to the trickery of image and show. Understanding that seeks to grasp the essence on the inside is diverted by the lure of appearances on the outside. I must, so to speak, strip away everything that has been falsely assumed or hastily imagined. I find that this has something in common with the Hindu concept of maya.

Though I suspect it may be about the Greek Cynic and Platonist philosophers respectively, I have never found an explanation of the reference to Crates and Xenocrates. It is quite fittingly Stoic, however, that a phrase Marcus Aurelius seems to assume is well known in his time has now been lost to history. Everything passes.

6.14

Most of the things that the multitude admire, are referred to objects of the most general kind, those that are held together by cohesion or natural organization, such as stones, wood, fig trees, vines, olives.

But those that are admired by men who are a little more reasonable, are referred to the things that are held together by a living principle, as flocks, herds.

Those that are admired by men who are still more instructed are the things that are held together by a rational soul, not however a universal soul, but rational so far as it is a soul skilled in some art, or expert in some other way, or simply rational so far as it possesses a number of slaves.

But he who values rational soul, a soul universal and fitted for political life, regards nothing else except this: above all things he keeps his soul in a condition and in an activity conformable to reason and social life, and he cooperates to this end with those who are of the same kind as himself.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.14 (tr Long)

Some people seek to be satisfied by possessing and enjoying inanimate things, and they measure the value of life by their presence. A big house, a flashy car, and plenty of food on the table are deemed to be most desirable.

Others may consider the possession of animate things to be more worthy, as did a man I knew in Texas, who defined himself by how many head of cattle and acres of corn he owned, and he was quite happy to share those magic numbers every time he saw me.

Others again may pursue a seemingly more human measure, and order life by the value of people. Yet this is not in the sense of respecting people for their own sake, but making use of people to achieve a convenient and profitable end. It is the attitude that perceives human beings as a resource to be exploited.

In all three cases, we are simply admiring different degrees of property, whether in commodities, plants and animals, or other human beings. It is concerned with what is external, and it revolves around how anything or anyone can be an instrument for us in increasing our own pleasure, position, or honor.

I have known people of all three types, though I have been most familiar with the third, since they are the ones I usually went to school and worked with. They would often think of themselves as being special, informed, and refined, and were convinced that they were doing society a great service.

I have seen high-powered educators, lawyers, and clerics make fun of construction workers greedy to profit from pouring their concrete, or farmers greedy to profit from selling their crops, but in the end they aren’t so very different at all. It is perhaps only more clever and efficient to greedily make a profit out of people themselves.

There is yet another, fourth and final, group of people Marcus Aurelius speaks about. They are certainly out there, though we might not notice them. They usually do not draw attention to themselves, and they care about a very different way of living, so they seem invisible to many. Regardless of their profession, circumstances, or position, they measure life by a genuinely human standard, not by how other people can be useful to them, but by how well they themselves can think and act.

Human reason is an end in itself, never a means to and end, and the dignity of any person proceeds from the exercise of his own virtue, never from his instrumentality for others.

Observe how the world tells us, time and time again, that success is defined by the things we own and the people we influence. The Stoic stands in sharp contrast, because who he is has little to do with what he has out there. Ordered by the character of his own actions, he is then capable of looking at others as fellow subjects, never as mere objects, sharing in the exact same goal of life.

This is why the Stoic can always choose to cooperate with others, because he knows he doesn’t have to be a user, and he must never dispose of anyone.

6.15

Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it, and of that which is coming into existence a part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages.

In this flowing stream then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things that hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

Something of this kind is the very life of every man, like the exhalation of the blood and the respiration of the air. For such as it is to have once drawn in the air and to have given it back, which we do every moment, just the same is it with the whole respiratory power, which you did receive at your birth, yesterday and the day before, to give it back to the element from which you did first draw it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.15 (tr Long)

We may use a variety of analogies to help us understand a concept, and drawing upon the likenesses of particular sense impressions to abstract universal principles can be especially helpful. For myself, this is because an idea may at first seem vague and obscure, but by binding it to something similar in my everyday experience I can appreciate a parallel. The abstraction is revealed through what is concrete.

The fact that the Universe is always in a state of change, a cycle of coming to be and passing away, can be especially difficult to grasp, especially since I imagine so many things in my own life that appear to be quite permanent. This is only the result of my limited perspective, so it can help me to comprehend a bigger picture by actually focusing on a smaller and more immediate example that shares in the same qualities.

I was immediately taken by the image of a man falling in love with a sparrow as it flies by. If I can think of all those things I am certain are lasting in this light, I will recognize how foolish my obsessions can be. What true value can there be in something that is already gone by the time I have noticed it? By stubbornly wishing things that are inherently passing to be constant, I am hardly appreciating them for what they are, but dwelling on my own imaginings.

When I was in high school, I would take the subway every day. One morning, I was drawn to a girl who got on the train and sat down a few seats away from me. She hardly had a look to her that would have interested most young men, and that was exactly why she interested me. She had the biggest green eyes, curly auburn hair, and she was wrapped in the longest scarf I’d ever seen. She took a copy of Joyce’s Dubliners from her bag, and started reading. She seemed so kind, and a little sad. I was twitterpated.

She got off a few stops later. I had, of course, not said a word to her, and I don’t think she even gave me a single glance. Yet the next morning, all I could think of was the possibility of seeing her again. And the next morning. And the next. I crafted all sorts of wild narratives explaining who she was, and why she might possibly take an interest in me. Simply riding the subway made me think of her, and I longed to find her for years and years.

The very last time I was ever in Boston, almost thirty years later, I got on that same subway, and I found myself sitting exactly where I had been that morning. I had to laugh to myself, because that same impression came over me, as vivid as the day it had happened all those years ago. Not only was it long gone now, but it had already been gone way back then. I made something permanent of what was fleeting, and created for myself an awareness of something I knew nothing about.

I had fallen in love with a sparrow.

Now if I can only apply that awareness to all the other aspects of my life, I might be on my way to thinking about change and renewal like a real Stoic.

Instead of thinking of coming to be and passing away like static objects popping in and out of existence, I find it better not to imagine it in terms of things at all, but in terms of a continuing process. I suspect this is why the Ancients, and especially the Stoics, liked the image of flowing water, where the substance is inseparable from its constant activity.

The image of breathing is equally powerful, as it operates on so many levels. Life itself is only possible through my motion of breathing, and it is constantly happening, even when I am not conscious of it. Inhaling and exhaling, expanding and contracting, are characteristic of the cyclical nature of all change. I receive the air, and then I give it back, just as my very life is received, and then given back.

Most helpful for me, just as a single breath, a coming and going in an instant, is but one moment of my own life, so too my own life is like a single breath in the unfolding of the Universe. That is the perspective I need to estimate the value of things rightly.

6.16

Neither is transpiration, as in plants, a thing to be valued, nor respiration, as in domesticated animals and wild beasts, nor the receiving of impressions by the appearances of things, nor being moved by desires as puppets by strings, nor assembling in herds, nor being nourished by food, for this is just like the act of separating and parting with the useless part of our food.

What then is worth being valued? To be received with clapping of hands? No. Neither must we value the clapping of tongues, for the praise that comes from the many is a clapping of tongues. Suppose then that you have given up this worthless thing called fame, what remains that is worth valuing?

This is, in my opinion, to move yourself and to restrain yourself in conformity to your proper constitution, to which end both all employments and arts lead. For every art aims at this, that the thing which has been made should be adapted to the work for which it has been made; and the vine-planter who looks after the vine, and the horse-breaker, and he who trains the dog, seek this end. But the education and the teaching of youth aim at something. In this, then, is the value of the education and the teaching. And if this is well, you will not seek anything else.

Will you not cease to value many other things too? Then you will be neither free, nor sufficient for your own happiness, nor without passion. For of necessity you must be envious, jealous, and suspicious of those who can take away those things, and plot against those who have that which is valued by you.

Of necessity, a man must be altogether in a state of perturbation who wants any of these things; and besides, he must often find fault with the gods. But to reverence and honor your own mind will make you content with yourself, and in harmony with society, and in agreement with the gods, that is, praising all that they give and have ordered.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.16 (tr Long)

What is the aim and purpose of human life? We may well confuse the lower functions of a rational animal with the higher functions. Though a man breathes, eats and drinks, reproduces, senses, feels pleasure and pain, desires, and lives in the company of his own kind, none of these things define his end.

What will determine his value is how his reason and choice, which are superior, order and rule over all these other aspects, which are inferior. That which is conditional in life must depend upon that which is unconditional. It will do me no good, for example, if I live with others, but I do not live with them in justice.

In my youth, I was regularly told that the acquisition of a career would make me happy. It would provide the comfort of being in a respected position, and bring with it also the financial opportunities such a life would require. I understood that this could be a means, if seen rightly, but I doubted that it could be an end. I found my few friends from college slowly losing interest in me, because they saw that I would not join them in the pursuit of business or law for the sake of fame and profit. I then found my even fewer friends in graduate school slowly losing interest in me, because they saw that I would not join them in the pursuit of academia for the sake of fame and profit.

I certainly felt lonely, but at the same time I knew I was struggling to follow the right path, however neglected and overgrown it had become. Fame is an empty business, because it depends on seeking the approval of others, and in seeking that approval by the most shallow and deceptive of means. It ceases to be a life lived well, but a life lived under the appearance of living well.

What else could remain? The alternative is for a man to look first to ruling himself, and to define himself by the excellence of his own character, instead of allowing himself to be ruled by his circumstances, to define himself through everything other than himself. This is the ultimate purpose of any action, of any endeavor, and of any art. Be a good lawyer, doctor, teacher, or salesman, but do so with the constant awareness that this must help you to be a virtuous human being.

I find it almost impossible to discuss the crisis of contemporary education with most people, because I am sadly assuming a very different end for any sort of learning. “We’d fix everything if we just gave young people decent job skills!” By all means do this, but it will mean absolutely nothing when separated from inspiring a sense of meaning and purpose. Producing obedient workers and voracious consumers cannot replace helping people become their own masters, by developing a moral identity.

Can’t I pursue a number of ends, and value a number of different things, so that I might be rich and esteemed, and at the same time honest and decent? Only insofar as one is subservient to the other, because I cannot equally and simultaneously define myself both by the dignity of what I do, along with the convenience of what is done to me.

We confuse our circumstances, to which we should be indifferent in themselves, with the merit of our thoughts and deeds, which are the only things in themselves good for human life. It’s no wonder we get life all backwards.

To seek satisfaction in what is outside myself will inevitably make me anxious, jealous, and manipulative, because I must always struggle to try and maintain what was never mine to begin with. I will resent others instead of loving them, and I will resent Nature instead of cooperating with her.

Let me plant my vines, or train my horses, or breed my dogs. Now let me only do this insofar as it makes me a better man, not a richer or more respected man.

6.17

Above, below, all around are the movements of the elements. But the motion of virtue is in none of these.

It is something more divine, and advancing by a way hardly observed, it goes happily on its road.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.17 (tr Long)

Virtue is not a motion of the matter we see directly around us, which has a passive principle of being moved.  Virtue is a motion of the mind, which is an active principle of moving. A man does not improve himself when his location, his position, or the state of his body is changed, but he improves himself by changing the state of his soul.

It is for this reason that many of us will barely even notice the action of virtue. It cannot be held in the hand, it cannot be bought and sold, and it is not an object of sense pleasure. Virtue is, therefore, something that is not, so to speak, on our radar. It does not warrant our attention, because we do not even recognize an excellence of mind and the building of character as anything of value.

The vicious man will certainly notice you with desire when you are convenient to him, and he will notice you with frustration when you are inconvenient to him. At all other times, however, he will look right through you. 

It took me some time to not think of this as burden, but as an opportunity. I would feel deeply sad or angry when people ignored or dismissed me, and I wondered what happened to all those people who had proudly called themselves friends.

Then it occurred to me that I might be doing something right when all the wrong sorts of people were disinterested. They are not the friends I need. I have nothing they want, which is actually quite a good thing. I can use the coming and going of their attention as a yardstick for my own success and failure.

And so I can go happily on my own way, as if I were invisible. I will not need to be in conflict with people who have no shared values with me. This is why virtue itself can pass unhindered through suffering and hardship, because it cannot be harmed by any quality so unlike itself.

When I was working at a church in the city, there was a fellow who would panhandle outside our door most every day. We never asked him to leave, because he was doing no harm, and though he was grateful when we brought him out meals, he would refuse any offers of a referral to a shelter. “Can’t live like that,” he would say. I would sometimes sit with him for a moment, and give him whatever was left in my pack of cigarettes. “I’ve got another one inside,” I would tell him.

We were right across from a major hospital, so plenty of doctors, nurses, and professional types would walk down our sidewalk. Almost everyone simply ignored him as he sat there. I once asked him if it he felt discouraged that so few people seemed to give him any attention.

He put on an exaggerated grimace. “You’re paying attention to me, aren’t you? And why would I want people like that to pay attention to me? Better off without them.”

I asked him if he’d ever read any Marcus Aurelius.

“Never heard of the guy. Nice fellow?”

“I’d like to think so.”

6.18

How strangely men act. They will not praise those who are living at the same time and living with themselves; but to be themselves praised by posterity, by those whom they have never seen or ever will see, this they set much value on.

But this is very much the same as if you should be grieved because those who have lived before you did not praise you.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.18 (tr Long)

I have long wondered about our obsession with receiving posthumous reputation, and I have observed it in a variety of forms. I suspect there are two of our human weaknesses that come into play. First, the fact that we will apply very different standards to what we are willing to give than to what we expect to receive. Second, the fact that we find it easier to deal with the glory of fame completely separate from whether or not it actually reflects real human character.

I need to quickly correct myself whenever I apply inconsistent rules about what I believe I should do, and what I believe others should do. This not only involves a logical contradiction in my judgment about the shared rights and responsibilities of all persons, but also results in the most glaring daily practices of injustice. Needless to say, I am facing quite a problem when I wish to take the very same thing I refuse to offer.

I also need to adjust my course whenever I see fame as worthy in itself, and I therefore try to take a shortcut to acquiring it. Now I could perhaps receive respect if others recognize some excellence within me, but if I want the respect without the excellence, the benefit of being praised regardless of what I may or may not have done, I will dwell only upon the way things appear, not the way they actually are.

In both cases, I am ignoring that most fundamental of Stoic principles. I am defining myself by my circumstances instead of my actions, and I am reversing the proper relationship between them. Accordingly, I will think that being honored takes precedence over honoring, and I will seek out honor from those who will possess only a caricature of my actual living. The further removed they are from my true self, the better.

It is far easier to impress someone who doesn’t even know me than someone who knows me intimately. The former can easily fall for an illusion, the latter may well see right through it. I may not be praised now, of course, but surely I can find contentment in the knowledge that someday I will be though of as great and important? Posterity becomes a glittering prize.

Yet seeking the respect of those who will live after me is just as foolish as seeking the respect of those who lived before me. Neither one has lived with me, worked with me, shared of anything with me. There is no prospect of my being his friend.

The vicious man seeks to be given a fine reputation by the people he can impress the most. The virtuous man seeks to be a fine friend to the people he can love the most.

6.19

If a thing is difficult to be accomplished by yourself, do not think that it is impossible for man.

But if anything is possible for man and conformable to his nature, think that this can be attained by yourself as well.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.19 (tr Long)

When I was first allowed to formally teach philosophy, I was offered very little advice on how to do the actual teaching. This might seem odd to someone who has not seen the insides of the higher education machine, but teaching is rarely a priority for the academic. I was largely on my own.

My biggest worry was that students would not be able to grasp the content, though I was only a few years older than they were. I quickly learned that if I explained an argument as clearly and directly as I could, made use of examples, and presented it as if it really meant something, the material itself was never the problem. They were quite capable of understanding.

The difficulty I confronted was rather one of application. The ideas may have been interesting, but I found students had little desire to actually live them out.

“That sounds great in theory, but how does it help me in practice?”

“Well, let’s be real. No one can actually go through life that way.”

“Do you realize everything I’d have to change if I wanted to be like Socrates? It’s too much to ask!”

I would bemoan all the dark aspects of the same collegiate culture I had recently left myself, but I quickly saw that I was being just as negative. After all the bells and whistles, the clever assignments, and the attempts at impassioned discussion, I was left with the only response I could give.

“Never assume that something difficult is something impossible. Consider how the best things in life are often the hardest to achieve.”

And if I really wanted them to believe me, I would need to be living that way myself. A man can hardly point to noble truths, insist that they are within reach, and then fail to pursue them for himself. “You go on ahead, I’ll catch up!” are hardly inspirational words.

Their hesitation about living a truly good life most often didn’t proceed from mere laziness, but it came from the assumption that such a happiness was actually impossible, completely out of their reach. As I got older, I would find myself telling those students, who just seemed to get younger and younger, that what was already within them, a part of who they already were, was never a distant dream or unobtainable goal.

The beauty of it all was that I needed to hear that just as much for myself. 

Those poor folks who know me well will also know that line from a great film I appeal to about this very question. Yes, you’ll need to hear it at least one more time:

Aqaba is over there. It’s only a matter of going.

6.20

In the gymnastic exercises suppose that a man has torn you with his nails, and by dashing against your head has inflicted a wound.

Well, we neither show any signs of vexation, nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterwards as a treacherous fellow. 

And yet we are on our guard against him, not however as an enemy, nor yet with suspicion, but we quietly get out of his way.

Something like this let your behavior be in all the other parts of life. Let us overlook many things in those who are like antagonists in the gymnasium. For it is in our power, as I said, to get out of the way, and to have neither suspicion nor hatred.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.20 (tr Long)

I have often struggled between the extremes of sticking around the people who were bad for me, or allowing myself to be consumed by resentment for them. There is a wonderful middle ground of neither allowing any harm to be done to myself, nor doing any harm to others.

As a rational and a social animal, man can always love his neighbor as himself, and he does not have to feel anger or hatred when he gets out of the way of someone who will do him wrong. In my own experience, I think of this as being able to judge without being judgmental, or being able to distinguish right from wrong without becoming self-righteous or dismissive.

And as this describes a harmonious relationship to our fellows, it can also describe a harmonious relationship to the entire world itself, and to the workings of Providence. I need never be hateful to any of my neighbors, and I need never be hateful to any of my circumstances.

Many years ago, I did not step aside when I saw someone dangerous heading my way. I do not need to delude myself by claiming that my ignorance was not of my own making. Years of allowing myself to be dragged about by dishonesty and disloyalty followed, and I consequently allowed myself to react with resentment or despair. The way I faced all other conditions and events mirrored this. My own estimation imposed a cynical and suspicious tint to everything that I saw around me.

Life does not need to be this way. I must deal with my sparring partners wisely, and I must manage anything that comes my way without the slightest degree of malice. There is never any need to cast blame outwards at anyone or anything, only to take responsibility for myself inwards. I can say no, without spitting venom.

Others will be as they will be, and I must justly make of myself what I can justly make of myself. I must never be in conflict with others, or with my world.

6.21

If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change.

For I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.21 (tr Long)

I spent a number of years teaching at a school that described itself as being based on both Catholic and Liberal Arts principles.  I believed in both of these principles. I committed myself to them with all of my heart and soul.

Yet the Vice President for Ministry abused young women. The Director of Campus Ministry, a married man, had affairs with students. Both are men deeply respected in the community. I didn’t want to believe any of it, until I saw it for myself. I saw for myself a priest run his hands over a young lady’s private bits. I also saw for myself a small and petty man making out with one of my students on the hood of his car. The administration, time and time again, ignored the facts, covered for the offenders, and cast aside the victims.

Surely, they were all good Catholics?

There was a horrible moment for me, when I realized I had been wrong. I had supported this institution, through thick and thin, even as they had never actually supported me. I made excuses for them, and I made excuses for myself. I wasted years of my life thinking wrong was right, and I am ashamed that I ever could have been so foolish as to do so.

Whenever I brought any of this up with my colleagues, I was told that the risk of scandal against the Church mattered far more than any of my petty concerns.

And then I grew up. No more. There is no shame in admitting that I was wrong. There is only shame in not making right of what I had done wrong.

I believe that the Catholic Church, as it currently stands, is the most corrupt institution I have ever known. I say that from having worked for them for over thirty years. I also believe the Catholic Faith is one of the greatest paths to righteousness and happiness. Go figure.

I have learned to allow other people to take their own paths. I have also learned that I must follow my own conscience, informed by the Divine, and I must never resist admitting my own errors.

To all those young ladies who told me about abuses, I apologize. I was wrong not to do more at the time. No one stood up for you.

To all those young people in general, who suffered from being treated like tools and being personally manipulated by a cultist Campus Ministry, I apologize. I was wrong not to do more at the time. No one stood up for you.

To anyone I dismissed, because I thought the Church could do no wrong, I apologize. You were right. I was wrong. No one stood up for you.

There’s a deeply humbling moment when a man realizes he has messed things up far more than he can say. A good man then turns things around, and he changes himself, and he changes his own thought and actions.

Redemption will never come from being excused by all of those fancy authorities that take my money in exchange for their glorious blessings.

Redemption will only come from fixing myself, and ordering my life to God as He would have it, not as I would have it.

6.22

I do my duty. Other things trouble me not.

For they are either things without life, or things without reason, or things that have rambled and know not the way.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.22 (tr Long)

When it comes to understanding and respecting the world, my span of attention must be broad. But when it comes to what I should worry myself about, and what I should seek to control, my span of attention must be quite narrow.

I am called to seek the good for all things, because I am a part within the whole. The way for me to serve the whole is to rule myself first and foremost, directing my concern at what is rightly within my power, my own thoughts and deeds.

I do not need to be anxious and frustrated with what is beyond my scope of responsibility. It is not for me to decide, and I can rightly trust that Providence will ultimately have it be as it should. Inanimate things proceed by their own set laws, directed by their own specific natures. Animate things proceed by their instincts, directed by their own specific natures. Rational creatures, however, proceed by their own judgments. It is my own estimation of things that allows me to rule myself.

This, in turn, will form how I choose to perceive the benefit and harm in other things around me. Does my neighbor choose evil? I can assist him back to the path of wisdom, but I cannot, and should hardly attempt, to do it for him. Only he can decide to do that.

I will often fuss and fret over many things that were never made for me to determine. Let them be as they must, but let me be certain to adapt myself rightly. If I am impatient with the world, I will find my life going very poorly. It is only my own weakness for which I should offer no quarter.

Peace and contentment do not come from ordering the world to my ease or preference. They come from ordering myself to the world. What a profound relief it is whenever I understand this.

I must remember that this is in no way a matter of selfishness, defeatism, or thoughtlessness. I am called to focus on my own distinct part to perform. To do anything else would be like a violinist in an orchestra also trying to play the trumpet parts, or a doctor telling an accountant how to do his job. What is, in fact, most deeply selfish is to insist on the power of my choices where it does not belong. Again, as Plato says, true justice is minding your own business.

A fine priest I once knew told me that my sense of duty would never ask me to play God, only to be His servant. A dear friend once told me that it’s always my job to love others, but never my job to make others love me. These are helpful ways to limit my worry, by directing my attention on what is my own.

6.23

As to the animals, which have no reason, and generally all things and objects, you should, since you have reason and they have none, make use of them with a generous and liberal spirit.

But towards human beings, as they have reason, behave in a social spirit.

And on all occasions call on the gods. Do not perplex yourself about the length of time in which you should do this, for even three hours so spent are sufficient.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.23 (tr Long)

Some things in this life, those that do not possess the power to freely rule themselves, can be there for our use. Yet our dominion over them, to use a familiar phrase, can surely never be one of greed or exploitation. It is necessary to make use of things well, always keeping in mind how their benefits exist for all of Nature, and how they are to be shared freely and responsibly.

In this way, we sometimes speak of minerals, or plants, or animals as being resources, though I wonder how often we confuse the care of stewardship with an exploitation of misguided ownership.

A fellow human being, however, is not a thing at all, but a person. He is not a what, but a who. I remember being a bit taken aback when I was still rather young, and I first heard the phrase “human resources” being used. I was confused about the idea that another person could be seen as a commodity, or as a means to an end. When I sincerely asked about this, I was met with blank stares. “Well, that’s what an employee is, right?”

However we are expected to see the relationship of people to profit in the world of business, I have always tried to think on a different level, a human level. Another person shares in the same powers of judgment and choice as myself, and he is therefore made to be his own master. Another person shares in the same end and purpose of existence as myself, and he has the right to seek happiness through his own actions.

He is not something I have authority over, but someone I share authority with. He is not there only to serve me, but we are both made to serve one another. Our nature orders us toward cooperation, not conflict.

Marcus Aurelius often speaks about practicing our social nature, and I suspect he means something deeper than just being pleasant or possessing good manners. To me, he is speaking about having an inherent respect for the dignity of each individual, regardless of any convenience or utility. Pleasing a friend to get what I want is quite different from loving a friend to help him get what he needs.

I notice that while I have a responsibility for the things below me, and a solidarity with the people equal to me, I must also have a reverence for what is above me. These three relationships go together, because they are all parts of the whole. Express this in whatever manner you think is best, but there is no fullness of Nature without looking to the Divine measure from which all other things proceed. It’s a package deal.

6.24

Alexander the Macedonian and his groom by death were brought to the same state.

For either they were received among the same seminal principles of the Universe, or they were alike dispersed among the atoms.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.24 (tr Long)

Some people find this disturbing. I actually find it quite comforting. I suppose our responses will depend upon what we think is worthy in life.

We will all end up in exactly the same state, not a bit of difference between us. That will involve either returning back to where we came from, and thereby having our being transformed, or simply ceasing to be entirely. In either case, no amount of acquiring wealth, or fame, or power alters that fact.

The only remaining question is to decide how I will choose to live, while I still live. Now is it best to live according to the measure of my own character, which is in itself the expression of my nature, or to live according to my position, which depends only upon the nature of other things? Is a man made by what comes from within him, or by what is added from outside him?

Some people are so familiar with a culture of status that they cannot imagine things differently. One of my students, for example, was baffled that someone might not even want to be a world conqueror instead of the fellow that cleans up after the horses.  He finally concluded, as I recall, that this could only be because weak people had to begrudgingly accept their failure.

I can only suggest that the true failure is in neglecting to rule myself first, and then surrendering my worth to external trappings. It seems to me as silly as judging a man by what his is wearing, or how many letters go before or after his name, or how many pieces of colored plastic are in his wallet. Yet many people will do precisely that, having considered no other possibility.

Just as puzzling can be those who speak the right words so eloquently, but whose deeds still remain tied to a love of externals. I need not be confused, however, because I should quickly notice the inconsistency between what they say and what they do. A colleague of mine once nobly expressed his regret for not having done the right thing. I was briefly moved. He then gave himself away completely by adding that he couldn’t do so, because it would have meant losing his chance for tenure.

Marcus Aurelius is simply reminding us that none of the titles, achievements, or luxuries of the world will really change who we are, and the fact that death is the great equalizer can be an encouragement to quite a different way of living. The Stoic, like any man of good principles, will never seek out what is extraneous and unnecessary. He defines himself by the virtue of what he does, not by the convenience of what comes to him.

It will make no difference if he lounges about in a palace or works in the stables.

6.25

Consider how many things in the same indivisible time take place in each of us, things that concern the body and things that concern the soul.

And so you should not wonder if many more things, or rather all things which come into existence in that which is the one and all, which we call the Cosmos, exist in it at the same time.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.25 (tr Long)

It becomes frighteningly easy to ignore the scale, the depth, and the diversity of the Universe, and thereby underestimate the profound and beautiful pattern in which all things participate. Even though I am only a tiny part within that whole, I will also neglect my own significance when I oversimplify my many aspects.

There isn’t just one change going on within me at any given moment, but a whole array of them, all of them related to one another and acting upon one another. Sometimes these different motions seem to be working together, and sometimes they seem to be in opposition, but each still plays a role within a greater harmony. Thinking, choosing, feeling, acting or being acted upon, a state of exertion or a state of rest, coming or going, growing or dying.

The way it is within each part is a reflection of the order of the whole. When I consider only one aspect of my existence, and judge myself by that alone, I am failing to understand the fullness of myself, and what I am made to be. Likewise, when I consider only one aspect of the whole world, and judge it by that alone, I am failing to understand the fullness of the Universe, and what it is made to be. Narrow thinking leads to narrow living.

Some people are intimidated when they think of the vastness and complexity of things, though I suspect this may only happen when we are tempted to view ourselves out of context. I don’t need to feel small or insignificant when I see how big or broad everything else is. I can just as easily be happy and proud to be a part of something so grand. The whole and the part do not exclude one another, and the distinct importance of one thing is not in conflict with the rather different importance of another.

I often think of those lines from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams:

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

A friend of mine would use this as an example of how meaningless life really was. In that vast expanse of space and time, he said, we are surely just nothing.

“Not nothing,” I would say. “Still something. Just not everything.” He did not take kindly to this, but we were still friends.

Yes, just a speck of flesh, on a pebble circling a star, in a cluster of stars among countless others. But that speck of flesh can ponder that very meaning, have a conscious sense of wonder at how that works, and is able to know and to love. That will more than do.

6.26

If any man should propose to you the question, how the name “Antoninus” is written, would you not with a patient voice utter each letter?

What then if he grow angry, will you be angry too? Will you not go on with composure and name every letter?

Just so then, in this life also remember that every duty is made up of certain parts. These it is your duty to observe, and without being disturbed, or showing anger towards those who are angry with you, to go on your way and finish that which is set before you.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.26 (tr Long)

I have often thought that the virtue of patience serves as a rather special and privileged extension of love. I will only be capable of being patient with anyone or with anything once I am truly committed to my sense of the good for anyone or for anything. As soon as I lose sight of this, my own thoughts and actions will degrade into frustration and resentment. I will abandon my interest, because my interest is then limited only to my own gratification.

If I care enough to do something right, I will continue with the task until it is complete. My obligation will usually not be fulfilled immediately. I will be in it for the long haul. This means that I must take everything step by step, slowly and sometimes quite painfully, resting only when I have lived up to all of the parts within the whole.

And this is never easy, especially when I am struggling with mastering my own selfishness. I am responsible for myself without condition, however inconvenient my situation may be. If someone else has not understood, I must not blame him, but ask what I can do to explain it better. If someone else lashes out at me, I must not lash out in return, but ask how I might improve my concern.

My father, a linguist by trade, would often annoy me to no end whenever I asked him how a difficult word was spelled. Trying to teach me that letters were not just symbols randomly strung together, he would sound out the word for me phonetically, slowly and deliberately. I would squirm and squeal. “Just give me the darn letters!”

He would do precisely that if I pressed him, but he would always try again, and again, to have me figure it out for myself. I could see his jaw clench, and hear the deep breath he would take as he practiced a patience that grew from love. When I had children of my own, I understood the torture he surely went through. What parent has not felt the urge to simply walk away, or to say something quite nasty, or to throw something at the wall in anger?

I learned that this isn’t simply about teaching someone how to spell. It’s about helping people to learn for themselves how to live, and it’s about suffering the most ridiculous of obstacles to do what is right, while others resist it with all their might.

I realized how love itself was on the line. I saw how others gave up on me when things didn’t go their way, and I saw that they did not love me. Far more importantly, I saw how often I treated others just as poorly, and I saw what I needed to do in order to love.

A good teacher will show complete dedication to the task of having his students learn, just as a good man will show complete dedication to the task of having his friends be happy. Are we resented, mocked, or cast aside? No matter. Try again, because the many parts of our tasks are not yet done.

People won’t always do that for me, but I must always do it for them.

6.27

How cruel it is not to allow men to strive after the things that appear to them to be suitable to their nature and profitable! And yet in a manner you do not allow them to do this, when you are vexed because they do wrong.

For they are certainly moved towards things, because they suppose them to be suitable to their nature and profitable to them.

“But it is not so!”

Teach them then, and show them without being angry.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.27 (tr Long)

I am unfortunately a man disposed to melancholy. I suspect I was born with the disposition, and a chain of bad experiences never made it any better. Accordingly, I instinctively see what is dark and disturbing before I can bring myself to see what is bright and uplifting. Whenever I confront greed, malice, thoughtlessness, or betrayal, I find it hard to simply take it philosophically. I am inclined to take it very personally.

This makes it all the more important for me to get my house in order. I actually have a very long fuse, but when that fuse finally runs out, after I’ve sat there quietly for ages and minded myself in silence, I can suddenly blow up. An Irish temper is not a pretty thing.

My anger arises from a sense of despair, and my despair arises from a sense that the world is just plain wrong. I am mistaken, of course, because the world will be exactly as it will be. The world is never really the problem. My attitude about the world is the real problem.

I will see something I think is wrong, and I will become indignant. Not righteous at all, but self-righteous. I will boil and bubble, and even as I am convinced I am in the right, my reactions will too readily be in the wrong.

Most of us can quite easily succumb to the temptation of rage. Friends have been lost, families broken, and wars waged to the bitter end. Hatred can seem so powerful.

But love is more powerful, and only love ever wins a battle. The battle is never against another, but always against ourselves.

I have sat there, in those very early hours of the morning, when any decent man should be asleep, and I have stewed in my own resentment. Then there will be that moment of realization, where I understand that I am only destroying myself. He passed you over? She broke your heart? They treated you like garbage? They all did so because they thought, in whatever way, that it was right.

Now how does my frustration change any of that? It never makes anyone else better, even as it always makes me worse. Hatred only breeds hatred.

A man may hurt me, and my instinct is to hurt him right back. But what was the cause of his actions? He believed, for his own reasons, that he was doing something good. Was he mistaken in this?

Perhaps. If he was, my own vengeance compounds the problem. When I meet the abuser, I need not myself become an abuser. When I meet the scoundrel, I need not myself become a scoundrel.

There is only one thing I can do to make it better. Teach, by word and, most importantly, by example. There is a very good reason Socrates was the honorary grandfather of Stoicism. He taught about right and wrong, but never forced others into his sense of right and wrong.

6.28

Death is a cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings that move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.28 (tr Long)

It is easier for many of us to see the negative, to recognize the bad in something long before discerning anything good. We may, in fact, be deliberately looking out for the things we can complain about, while ignoring the things we can appreciate.

The Stoic recognizes, however, that the good or the bad in our lives will depend entirely upon how we make use of our circumstances. I can, if only I so choose, resist the temptation to dwell upon the doom and gloom. I can deliberately attend to what will bring benefit instead of harm. There is a certain satisfaction in being able to “turn” a situation, having altered nothing about the conditions themselves, but having altered everything about my estimation of them.

Death, for example, will tend to immediately make us uncomfortable. It is a necessary component of life, and we seem to be quite ready to portray it regularly in news and entertainment, but there is certain awkward hush when it stands directly in front of us. We formulaically offer our mumbled regrets and prayers, look around nervously, and hope it will just all go away. It is the end of things, after all, and we don’t like to think of ourselves ceasing to be.

Regardless of whether we think of death as the erasing of self or the transformation of self, I need not consider only what is lost, but I can also consider what is gained.

Nothing, in the Stoic sense, ever completely ends at all. It changes into something else, and I can rest assured that I am playing my own necessary part in the unfolding of Nature. I can also find peace in knowing that those very things I found so troublesome and frustrating in this life, the ones that often seemed such a burden, will now be lifted from me.

Marcus Aurelius tells us exactly what those apparent hindrances have been, and reminds us that we will now be free of them.

I will be free of the senses, which can have a way of assaulting me with waves of confusing and disturbing images.

I will be free of pain, which can leave me weak and cast down, just as much as I will be free of pleasure, which can leave me enslaved to desire.

I will be free of the thinking that can be so befuddled, uncertain, and unclear, stumbling about here and there, unsure of where I have come from and where I am going.

I will be free of the demands of the body, those ridiculous needs that always required so much my plodding effort and routine.

I should never allow worry to consume me in this life, of course, but death can be said to allow me to no longer have to attend to that pesky temptation of worry. Understood rightly, it is hardly silly to say that it all depends on how I look at it.

There was a good reason Socrates suggested in the Phaedo that we can think of death not as the ending of what is pleasant, but as being liberated from what is unpleasant. Whatever may become of me, it will at the very least be a change into something completely new.

6.29

It is a shame for the soul to be first to give way in this life, when your body does not give way.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.29 (tr Long)

We are all quite familiar with an image of death where a soul, still eager and vibrant, is forced to leave this earth, because the vessel of the body, all worn and broken, is now too weak to contain it.  There might still seem to be so much more to do and so many things to discover, and we will regret our departure like a child being asked to leave an amusement park.

For me, it is much like those many nights when I was trying to read just the next few lines in a book that had me hooked, but the day had exhausted me, and the words blurred as I drifted off into sleep. Perhaps I could dream about what I had wanted to read?

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

We may think this is unfortunate, perhaps even tragic, but what is far more unfortunate and tragic is when the places have been reversed. There may still be life in the body, energy to expend, and years left to live, but the soul has given out. All the functions of life are still there, continuing in a regular routine of making it through the day, but there seems to be no will, no wonder, no joy. Commitment has given way to indifference, truth has become blurred, and right and wrong have been mixed into a sickening sort of gray.

A friend of mine would describe this as a state where the lights were on, but nobody was home. It wasn’t that a person was innately slow in their thinking, he said, but that they were simply no longer choosing to think. The flesh was strong, but the spirit was no longer willing.

Now while a body may whither or die from starvation, disease, or just old age, from those harsh conditions that have been imposed upon it, a soul does not seem to whither or die in quite the same way. It doesn’t go from the outside in, but from the inside out. There can be a strong and lively body wrapped around a weak and gloomy soul whenever a man has chosen to give up the ghost. It hasn’t been taken from him, but he has freely surrendered it.

I have seen this death of the soul around me quite often, and I believe most often wherever I also see people surrounded by all the affluence and gratification they could possibly desire. I have seen it in myself quite often, and I believe most often whenever I have decided to let the world rule me instead of ruling myself, or allowed myself to be measured by conditions instead of character, or chosen to be led by the nose instead of following my own path.

I don’t need to be a zombie, alive on the outside but dead on the inside, simply going through the motions. My sick body may need to wait for the doctor’s prescription, but my sick soul already contains the means for a cure. I am the one who will decide if I will choose to know and love. No one else can do that for me. 

6.30

Take care that you are not made into a Caesar, that you art not dyed with this dye, for such things happen. Keep yourself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Strive to continue to be such as philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods, and help men.

Short is life. There is only one fruit of this earthly life, a pious disposition and social acts.

Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus. Remember his constancy in every act which was conformable to reason, and his evenness in all things, and his piety, and the serenity of his countenance, and his sweetness, and his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to understand things.

And how he would never let anything pass without having first most carefully examined it and clearly understood it; and how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return; how he did nothing in a hurry; and how he listened not to calumnies, and how exact an examiner of manners and actions he was; and not given to reproach people, nor timid, nor suspicious, nor a sophist; and with how little he was satisfied, such as lodging, bed, dress, food, servants; and how laborious and patient; and how he was able on account of his sparing diet to hold out to the evening, not even requiring to relieve himself by any evacuations except at the usual hour; and his firmness and uniformity in his friendships; and how he tolerated freedom of speech in those who opposed his opinions; and the pleasure that he had when any man showed him anything better; and how religious he was without superstition.

Imitate all this that you may have as good a conscience, when your last hour comes, as he had.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.30 (tr Long)

Many of us will find comfort and encouragement in some familiar reminder whenever we feel confused or disheartened. My mother will often glance at a photograph of her father, my wife will read from the Liturgy of the Hours, and my son will look through his collection of minerals. I will either listen to my favorite music or find myself a brief Stoic passage to get myself back on track.

All sorts of obstacles will seem to stand in my way, and all sorts of tempting diversions will hover around me. I am setting myself up for grief if I don’t stop, for however brief a moment, and find my bearings. Even the simplest of phrases can recharge my commitment, not because of the words themselves, but because of how they point me to an appreciation of what is true, good, and beautiful. Simplicity and directness are often the key, since a happy life is ultimately something quite simple and direct, free from all the vanities and the noise.

Now this passage is a longer one, filled with all sorts of characteristics of a life well lived, but I always summarize it for myself just as Marcus Aurelius does: piety for the Divine, charity for my neighbor. These two aspects clearly contain all that is necessary to live according to Nature.

Marcus Aurelius himself, of course, was a Caesar, but I suspect he is thinking here about how his attitude and manner of living, whatever his circumstances, must always remain sincere, humble, thoughtful, compassionate, and respectful. Providence may have asked the Philosopher-Emperor to wear the purple robe, but he would not let the arrogance and lust for power of the purple seep into his soul.

Just as my mother thinks of her father, or anyone can look to the example of another for inspiration, our fellows can serve us as a means of encouragement, whether they are still with us in person or only in memory. Here for Marcus Aurelius this model is Antoninus Pius, his adoptive father and predecessor as Emperor. Keeping in mind the many virtues of Antoninus helps Marcus pursue virtue for himself.

Sometimes I will fail to recognize whom I should think worthy of imitation. I will see people who are charming, clever, imposing, refined, or influential, and I will forget that these qualities, however appealing, are quite indifferent. I will confuse being an impressive man with being a good man, and so I get caught up in all sorts of contorted social games. I find myself distracted from the task, dazzled by appearances. The simplicity and directness of a good life is only recovered later, when my head is once again screwed on right.  

Whether or not Mark Twain originally said it, I know from my own experience how accurate this saying is:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

6.31

Return to your sober senses and call yourself back.

As when you have roused yourself from sleep and have perceived that they were only dreams that troubled you, now in your waking hours look at these things around you, as you did look at those dreams.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.31 (tr Long)

Ridiculous flights of imagination and contorted trains of thought will often bring me far away from where I need to be. One helpful exercise for me to keep grounded is to picture myself trying to wake up from a deep sleep, and to deliberately focus my attention on a real world over a world of dreams.

Just as I can recognize that the appearances in my unconscious state do not need to frighten or disturb me, so too I can recognize equally that the appearances in my conscious state also do not need to frighten or disturb me. Illusions, whether sleeping or waking, are not the result of things, but of my estimation of things.

I suppose all of us dream in our own way, and while my conscious daydreaming will sometimes involve wonderful and fantastical places, my dreams at night are usually quite unpleasant. I’m hardly qualified to make complete sense of them, but I can certainly discern certain patterns and inclinations. This can assist me in giving order to my thoughts and feelings.

I have one dream that has been recurring now for over thirty years. It still takes place as if I was six years old. It seems a pleasant, sunny day, and all of the children in our class are playing in a field by our school.

Suddenly we all scatter, screaming and running in every direction. I never see what we are frightened of, but I somehow know it is there, right behind my shoulder. I run toward a mound, part of an old aqueduct system that passes through the neighborhood. I grapple to the top, and then run down the other side.

I am faced with a garden fence, very low and hardly an obstacle, yet I find that I do not have the strength within me to climb over it. The only other child who is still with me leaps right over the fence, exerting no effort at all, and disappears into the backyard of a house. I gaze at of the back of the house, each detail exactly as it looked then, my hands still weakly grasping the fence, and somehow knowing this is the end. I begin to turn my head slowly to see whatever is coming for me.

Then I suddenly wake up, often screaming. I still have this dream regularly, many decades after I first had it. What frightens me about it even more is that the actual house in question was bought many years later by someone I knew, someone who had been a source of both great happiness and even greater sadness. I could not possibly have known that at the time, but it is a part of the original dream nonetheless.

Even a first-year psychology student could have a field day with this, on all sorts of levels, but I have come to understand it in my own way.

When I have that dream again, and I am certain that I will, I can find some comfort, as I slowly catch my breath after having been ripped from a deep sleep. I can know that all of the fear and worry is something I have created for myself.

When I must face grave concerns in life again, and I am certain that I will, I can also find some comfort, as I slowly catch my breath after having been ripped from something quite like a deep sleep. I can know that all of the fear and worry is something I have created for myself.

6.32

I consist of a little body and a soul. Now to this little body all things are indifferent, for it is not able to perceive differences.

But to the understanding those things only are indifferent, which are not the works of its own activity. But whatever things are the works of its own activity, all these are in its power.

And of these, however, only those that are done with reference to the present, for as to the future and the past activities of the mind, even these are for the present indifferent.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.32 (tr Long)

The Stoic concept of indifference is often confused with apathy in our age of “meh” and “What, me worry?” The point is not that we shouldn’t care, or that things do not contain a good according to their own nature, but rather that external things are only good for our nature insofar as they help us in being virtuous, and bad for our nature insofar as they hinder us from being virtuous. The benefit or harm of any circumstances, whatever our preferences may be, is in how we choose to act upon them.

We are so used to defining ourselves by the conditions of our body, yet these do not in themselves determine our moral worth. A body itself is not aware, and a body itself does not choose. Any moral value in my physical state is relative to my mental attitudes.

Being healthy or sick, young or old, in pleasure or in pain, strong or weak, do not make a life worthy or unworthy. How the soul makes use of any and every situation for the sake of character is what will make a life worthy or unworthy.

I must remember, therefore, to focus on what is within my power, on what I can do, not merely upon what can be done to me. My attention must further be directed at what I can do here and now, not at what I have done in the past, which is no longer within my power, or what I might do in the future, which is not yet within my power. I can reflect upon the past and learn from it, or speculate about the future and plan for it, but only doing something in the present is within my grasp.

Now this may seem a terrible hindrance to someone who expects his life to be about conquering the world, even as it is a wonderful liberation for someone who expects his life to be about conquering himself. The world, however, will be as it is, and is largely far beyond my control. To seek to rule it is to become a slave to its circumstances. I will be as I am, completely within my control. To rule myself at this very moment is to find meaning and purpose within all of my circumstances.

Many people will perceive their merit to lie in what they have done, in what they intend to do, or in what convenience they have in their current situation. None of these things are really theirs to possess. The busybodies, the grasping men, the wheeler-dealers are overlooking the one thing that is absolutely and unconditionally their own, the power of acting in the moment, and of choosing in the moment with wisdom and virtue. All else is indifferent.

I have sometimes let myself be determined by the weight of my past, or distracted by the illusion of my future, or have wallowed in the pleasure of externals in the present. Each has made me miserable, precisely because I have not been making myself.

6.33

Neither the labor that the hand does nor that of the foot is contrary to nature, so long as the foot does the foot's work and the hand the hand's.

So then neither to a man as a man is his labor contrary to nature, so long as it does the things of a man.

But if the labor is not contrary to his nature, neither is it an evil to him.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.33 (tr Long)

To understand what something is requires understanding what it is for. What is its end, purpose, function, or goal? Philosophers will sometimes speak of this as a final cause, and it is in practice inseparable from its efficient cause, where it came from, its material cause, what it is made out of, and its formal cause, its inherent structure and identity.

When I was a child, I would often enjoy going down to my great-grandfather’s basement to sort through all the strange and wonderful things he had collected over his life. He had been a carpenter, and so he had many unusual woodworking tools, many of them of a manual sort that had fallen out of favor when power tools became the norm. I would look them over, wondering what they were all supposed to do. Sometimes I would figure it out for myself, but more often my Pipa would explain it to me, perhaps even demonstrate its use.

Because I now understood why it had been made the way it was, what at first seemed a confusing collection of strange pieces of wood and metal with mysterious edges, screws, knobs, and latches, now took on a meaning for me. By seeing what it was intended to do, I also saw why the parts were made the way they were.

The best I can manage is to sit out back with my set of Mora knives and whittle animals from blocks of wood, but I can imagine his voice telling me which shape of blade would be best for the task at hand.

Just as a man makes a tool for a purpose, so too Nature makes all things for a purpose. The form follows the function, and I can learn the nature of a thing by discerning what it rightly does. The hand is ordered in such a way that it is made for grasping, and the foot is ordered in such a way that it is made for walking. Every part of man has a specific function, and the whole of a man, with all the parts joined together, also has a unified function. We might add further that all men, an all the things in this world, animate and inanimate, serve a role within the order of the whole Universe.

A hand acts according to its nature when it helps us to manipulate things, and a foot acts according to its nature when it helps us to get from place to place. Could I use my hands to walk, or my feet to pick something up? Certainly, and this would hardly be unnatural, unless it somehow hindered or obstructed either of them from what they were meant to do in the first place.

What are the actions of a whole man intended to do? Not merely to live or to feel, but because he is a creature made with reason and choice, he is made to know what is true and to love what is good, and to then have all of his actions proceed from these principles. What else can he do? Anything he chooses, as long as it does not hinder or obstruct him from wisdom and virtue.

Some people would like you to think that you must pursue only one very narrow and specific sort of path in life in order to live well, but what they are really telling you is that they want you to choose exactly the same way they do. Do not be deceived, because Nature has given you one great and noble task, to live with understanding and with charity in all things.

The rest is all relative, including your profession, your politics, how you eat your eggs and cut your hair, or whether you even eat eggs and have any hair on your head at all. Good and decent people are simply good are decent people, regardless of their status and what tribes they happen to belong to. You know full well who the good and decent people are.

What will help me the most in being a man charged with character? I should choose whatever will aid me in that ultimate goal, and that particular choice is rightly my own. It is natural if it assists me in practicing wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice. It is only unnatural if it drags me into ignorance, cowardice, lust, and greed.

Don’t make a tool any more complex than it has to be, and don’t make life any more difficult than it has to be.

6.34

How many pleasures have been enjoyed by robbers, patricides, tyrants.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.34 (tr Long)

There is a perfectly good reason that the Stoics stood in strong opposition to the Epicureans. The Stoics did not believe that the presence of pleasure, and the absence of pain, defined the worth of a human being. They knew there was something far greater than all of that.

I’d like to say that only animals seek pleasure at all costs, but that isn’t quite true. It is an insult to the dignity of animals. No, animals will quite often sacrifice their comfort for the power of their instincts.

I once, in total horror, watched a mother cat defending her kittens from two wild dogs. Being the foolish old hippie that I am, I rushed in to help her. I could do nothing, and ended up with nasty dog bites on my hands and arms. Mother cat had a torn ear, and a mauled paw, and she was bleeding all over. I backed away, but she stood her ground. The dogs gave up their efforts. There was surely no pleasure in it for her.

She even hissed and scratched at me when I took her and her children to the vet.

Only a human being would be so foolish as to think that pleasure alone will fulfill him. We do exactly that, so much of the time. An animal does right by itself when it follows its natural instincts. A man does wrong for himself when he fails to follow his reason.

What unites all the players, thieves, or abusers of this world is the sense that their own gratification rules supreme. Their pleasure may come from the most base and physical sort, but I have found that it more often comes from a feeling of power, of having control over another.

Many years ago, I dated a girl who liked to play the field, as they say. Yes, I know, I should never have gone there. Lesson learned. One day, she seemed quite on edge. I asked her what was on her mind.

“I was with your friend Jay last night.”

“Yes, I know, we all had a good night, but you were drunk, and he drove you home.”

“No, I convinced him to take me to his place. Then I f***ed him.”

She immediately ran into the ladies’ room, but for a moment before that, I saw a look on her face. It was a look of the deepest satisfaction. She was having her fun from bragging, and she was pleased by the shock in my own expression. I’d like to think it had nothing to do with what he gave her, but perhaps I am mistaken. I suspect it had far more to do with her sense of manipulating both of us.

I have come to learn that vicious people enjoy what they do, and it pleases them to no end. Even the worst of people enjoy their pleasures, however they might choose to find them.

The barbaric folks gratify themselves. That hardly makes them good folks.

6.35

Do you not see how the craftsmen accommodate themselves up to a certain point to those who are not skilled in their craft? Nevertheless, they cling to the principles of their art and do not endure to depart from it.

 Is it not strange when the architect and the physician shall have more respect to the principles of their own arts than a man to his own reason, which is common to him and to the gods?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.35 (tr Long)

I once sadly had a bit of an adult version of a temper tantrum, when a high and mighty fellow was pontificating about how we all should be doing our jobs. He kept saying, over and over, that nothing was more important than being “professional.”

After about an hour of this, I unfortunately blew a gasket. “What do you think that word means? You keep appealing to it, but I have no sense of what it actually involves. Is there some set of directives for us being professional that I forgot to read?”

The look he gave me clearly told me that I was not being professional. The only response he could give, full of hemming and hawing, was that it involved some vague sense of propriety.

“It means, ummm, doing whatever is, uhhh, acceptable, and, like, sort of appropriate, in, you know, your career, right?” He then struggled for the rest of his talk not to use his favorite word.

We all take our jobs quite seriously, and we do our very best to play by those sacred rules. We may drive recklessly on the road, speak poorly of others behind their backs, cheat on our spouses, or neglect our children, but we dare not violate the professional code.

There, I think, is the root of the problem, and it is exactly what Marcus Aurelius is calling us out for. I may be quite committed to being a good doctor, or lawyer, or banker. Now when did I lose track of being a good human being? I will spend my youth learning the tricks of the trade, my adult years practicing them, and my retirement basking in my glory. In all of my time being a professional, did I actually spend any of my efforts in being loving and understanding?

“Well, you can’t learn that in school, obviously!”

No, I can’t. I can learn to do what is expected of me professionally in school. But life should teach me, right from the start, about virtue. Why am I so dedicated to the skills of my job, about making widgets, about selling doohickeys, and coloring within the lines, while I ignore the only thing I was actually made for, to live well?

These are uncomfortable questions. Perhaps we can appoint a professional committee to discuss them, while I continue to worry more about my career than my character.

6.36

Asia and Europe are corners of the Universe. All the sea is a drop in the Universe. Athos is a little clod of the Universe. All the present time is a point in eternity. All things are little, changeable, perishable.

All things come from there, from that universal ruling power, either directly proceeding, or by way of sequence.

And accordingly the lion's gaping jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every harmful thing, as a thorn, as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful.

Do not then imagine that they are of another kind from that which you venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.36 (tr Long)

I was deeply moved when I first read this passage. I still am. It isn’t just that it is quite profound, but also that the principle is one the most immediate and practical of tools for enduring the hardships of life.

I am often too keen to divide my world into the things that I like, and the things that I dislike. I prefer a pint of Guinness, a dusty old book, and the fellowship of true friends. I do not prefer Brussels sprouts, traffic jams, and lawyers. I will revel in the one set, and I will grumble at the other.

And my problem is that I am not seeing things from the right perspective, as they truly are within the pattern of the whole. I magnify them out of proportion, I judge them only by my passions, and I forget that everything is exactly as it is for a very good reason.

Everything that seems so big to me, so desirable or so despicable, is really rather small in the bigger picture. If I can remember that it is passing, that it is only here in this remote bit of the world for a moment, I will not be so consumed by longing or by contempt. This too, as they say, shall pass. That’s good for both the things I love and the things I hate, and it tells me not to be so caught up in things to begin with.

The value of something should hardly be measured by my preferences. Not for a want of trying, I simply do not enjoy the music of Wagner, or of Led Zeppelin. I find both of them pompous and vain. This has everything to do with my opinion, however, and not with their merit. I can learn to respect, and even appreciate, the things I don’t have much of a liking for.

The world is not there for my convenience. I am here to serve, not to be served. If Providence has put it there, it has done so wisely. At the very least, that reason could simply be to teach me to practice reverence instead of resentment, acceptance instead of dismissal, and to remind me that it isn’t all about me. Even the most unpleasant things can help me to remember to be pleasant.

Don’t let the “modern” Stoics, the minimalist Stoics, the cafeteria Stoics mislead you. Nothing in the entire model will work without a sense of the whole of Nature, of the order of the Universe, of the breadth of Providence, of the universal ruling power. I can only live according to Nature if I acknowledge that there is such a Nature, something bigger than myself, something of which I am a part.

I should not reject the concept of the Divine because I don’t like something, but I should rather seek to find what is Divine in everything I dislike.

6.37

He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything that has taken place from all eternity and everything that will be for time without end.

For all things are of one kin and of one form.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.37 (tr Long)

I have become so familiar with the Stoic insistence that everything changes, how the continual process of generation, modification, and destruction is always present in life, that I can easily overlook the constant patterns of such change. Particular things will come and they will go, but the shared form by which they come and go remains universal. The players are different, so to speak, but the stories remain the same. Even as everything seems new, there is still really nothing new under the sun, because what is now has once been before, and will soon be again.

When I was very young, everything seemed quite static and stable, and it took the passage of time to recognize that what I though would always be there would actually pass away, sometimes quite unexpectedly.

Then I noticed that things started to come around again, that the very same circumstances and hardships, the very same pleasures and pains that I had experienced before, were now being experienced by others.

I would smile when I saw people falling in love, because I had known that once. I would cry when I saw their hearts broken, because I had been there, too. I saw the same hope and despair, the same dreams and disappointments, the same commitments and betrayals. Different people were involved, of course, and the settings were different, but the situations were replaying themselves, and the choices people made, for good or bad, were on a sort of loop.

The same sun rises and sets over the world day after day, it shines brightly or is darkened through clouds, over all sorts of varied landscapes and new generations, but it is still the same sun. Yes, one day, I imagine, that sun will burn out, and then a different sun, but still very much like it, will rise and set on a different world, but still very much like it.

If I had the necessary gifts, I would write a piece of music chronicling the lives of varied people in three sequential decades, say the ‘70’s, ‘80’s, and ‘90’s, and make a film to go with it, sometimes zipping ahead in fast forward, sometimes slowing down to zoom in on this or that situation.

It could even, perhaps, have a single, unnoticed observer throughout the whole affair, who alone sees how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Someone like the nameless figure in Kieslowksi’s Dekalog, a set of short films where people struggle with the same old Ten Commandments now as they always have, and as long as there have ever been rational animals.

The longer I’ve walked through this world, the more I stumble across the same old problems, with the same old solutions, and people having to relearn it all over again. This is hardly mysterious, because it remains the same Nature, ordered by the same Providence, populated by human beings who may speak differently, have wildly diverging customs, and look quite distinct, but who ultimately all have the same needs. They seek to understand, and they seek to love, because they are all creatures of mind and will, even when they don’t recognize it at the time.

People have often told me that there are really only a certain number of plots possible in drama, whether they insist three are three, six, seven, or a few dozen. We may divide them in any number of ways, just like we can with any set of principles or rules, but it seems quite fitting that each story mirrors every other that preceded it, and predicts every other that will follow it.

6.38

Frequently consider the connection of all things in the Universe and their relation to one another. For in a manner all things are implicated with one another, and all in this way are friendly to one another.

 For one thing comes in order after another, and this is by virtue of the active movement and mutual cooperation and the unity of the substance.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.38 (tr Long)

Already as a child, I would be troubled by the sight of suffering, or by instances of death, or by experiencing a loss in others. When I was eight years old, I came across a dead cat by the brook next to our school. Hardly able to commandeer a shovel from my teacher at that tender age, I started gathering rocks from around the park to build something of a little cairn for her. It became my task for the lunch hour, and, if necessary, right after school.

Some of the other children, always eager to mind someone else’s business, saw that I was up to something. A few of the most aggressive ones gathered around me, and they found my plan laughable. They took a branch, picked up the corpse with it, and ran around the playground. A fellow I thought of as my friend, who lived only a few houses away from me, chased after me with their atrocity, waving it in my face.

“Why don’t you kiss it if you love it so much?”

As with so many people of limited character, their sense of attention was also limited. They lost interest in their ridicule. They threw aside their plaything, and went on their ways. I finished my job the next morning, before school started. I hid it well. My little cairn was still there years later, though quite a bit worse for wear, when I would walk past it coming home from college classes.

My first thought as a child was why that animal had to die. Had she done something wrong? Did she deserve it for some reason? It all seemed quite unfair.

My second thought as a child, after I was laughed at, was why I had to be mistreated. Had I done something wrong? Did I deserve it for some reason? It also seemed quite unfair.

Yet the animal had died, perhaps from old age, or from disease, or from a predator. I later learned to understand that this was quite right, because the passing of one thing for the continuation of another is not a moral wrong. It is the way of Nature. It’s part of the cycle and the pattern of the whole. One thing will make way for something else, the old transformed into the new.

It took me longer to put myself in the same place. I have come, and I will go. There is no evil in it.

Is there evil in the intentions of others? Quite possibly, but that is not for me to decide. What will come my way, will come my way. What will come to another, will come to another. My judgment and my choice are to live with Nature. The judgment and choice of another may well be to live contrary to Nature.

In a beautiful irony, we will both end up playing our own parts. I, however, will have tried to cooperate with Nature, and another will have resisted Nature. I’d like to believe I got the better half of the deal.

Those of us given the power of judgment and choice are granted a great gift. We can struggle against who we are, and against the whole, and we will find only resentment and conflict.

Or we can embrace who we are, within the whole, and we will find satisfaction and peace. That choice, of whether to love or to hate, will make all of the difference.

6.39

Adapt yourself to the things with which your lot has been cast.

And the men among whom you have received your portion, love them, but do it truly, sincerely.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.39 (tr Long)

We now live in a world where Stoicism is treated as just another commodity, something to be bought and sold. I was recently approached by a fellow, who advised me to take his online courses. There would be a hefty fee, of course, but it would make me completely happy.

I knew it had all gone south when I was asked to buy a Stoic amulet. I didn’t know if I was supposed to wear it on my neck as bling, or display it on my office desk, but I knew it was a set of lies from the get go.

Philosophers of all types will write all sorts of things. Some of us write something, and we sometimes ask to be paid for an article or for a book. We make no real money off of it, of course. In twenty years, I have earned exactly $402.85 for everything I have ever written. Ask The IRS.

No, we now have hipster marketing people telling us that Stoicism is the way to go. Nature is no longer about Providence, apparently, but just about the “facts.” To be fair, if I was handsome, rich, and clever, I might also succumb to the temptation. If I’m a Stoic, they say, I’ll be successful in their world of business.

We also have academics that have realized how they can make a career for themselves by selling Stoicism by the pound. To be fair, if I play my game right, and kiss enough ass, I might also succumb to that temptation. If I’m a Stoic, they say, I might succeed in their world of scholarship.

But if you are truly a Stoic, neither money nor fame would ever move you. Don’t sell me courses. Don’t sell me amulets. Express your character, whether or not anyone else notices.

We are all so used to making the world our own, and now the business folks and the academics tell us that Stoicism is another way to do that.

But that isn’t Stoicism. See the passage above.

Accept, with respect and dignity, what Nature has given. Then show love, absolute love, with all sincerity and integrity.

Will it make me rich or famous? As soon as I ask that question, I am not a Stoic. I am not even a decent person to begin with.

6.40

Every instrument, tool, or vessel, if it does that for which it has been made, is good, and yet he who made it is not there.

But in the things that are held together by Nature there is within, and there abides in them, the power which made them.

Wherefore all the more is it fit to reverence this power, and to think, that, if you live and act according to its will, everything in you is in conformity to Intelligence. And thus also in the Universe the things that belong to it are in conformity to Intelligence.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.40 (tr Long)

“I’m a Stoic, but I don’t believe in God. That’s an outdated concept, and it doesn’t fit the facts.”

Now many of my theist friends, especially those who are in love with the ideology of this or that “-ism”, will gnash their teeth at such a claim. I will smile, nod my head, and continue along the way.

If a man sees the effect, but denies the cause, will it help him if I berate him? If a man says he has reverence for Nature, but denies the order and Intelligence in Nature, will it help him if I burn him at the stake?

In life, there is no craft without the craftsman, and there is no tool without the man who made the tool. The man who made the tool may be long gone, no longer anywhere in sight. This does not, however, mean that he never existed to begin with.

Nature is a bit different. The Craftsman is not someone that was then. The Craftsman is someone that is now, because who He is cannot be separated from what He has made, from what He is making.

The old watchmaker analogy only goes so far. I always say that any analogy is inherently weak, precisely because it is an analogy, a similarity, and not an identity. If I am looking for God somewhere up there, I will not find Him. If I simply look around me, and within myself, why, what a pleasant surprise! Here He is! To employ another weak analogy, it’s like looking for my keys all over town, only to find they were in my pocket the whole time.

The Twelve Steps helped me to save my life. I know, the skeptics and the naysayers laugh, but that is because they do not understand the power of the human mind, and the power of the human mind to move beyond itself. It wasn’t because I was a drunk or a junkie, though I have been both at points in my life. It wasn’t AA, or NA. It was about something very different, something much deeper than that. I would ridicule the sense of tribalism, the sense of conformity, and I would call it all a bunch of voodoo for ignorant folks.

Then, one day, I sat down, with a sense of humility for a change, a humility that came from a desperate need. There I was, embracing the First Step.

And the Second Step immediately tripped me up.

“There is no God,” I said in anger. “He was never there for me. If He even made me, He left me to rot!”

And I only said that because I was looking for God in all the wrong places. He wasn’t up in the sky. He wasn’t a product the fancy priests sold me. He wasn’t some invisible force that decided if I was naughty or nice. He, if you choose that term, was immediately present. To be philosophical about it, certainly transcendent, in the sense that what orders the whole is above the whole, but most importantly, from a personal perspective, completely immanent, in the sense that what orders the whole is within the whole.

In my social service days, we had a client who had been clean and sober for twenty years. One of the priests I worked with, a rather self-important fellow, used to make fun of him, because his “God” was the bottle cap from the last beer he ever drank.

The fellow shrugged off the mockery, with the good will and good humor of a decent man.

“Of course that bottle cap isn’t God. It’s a bottle cap. I’m not the first guy to do it this way, and I won’t be the last. It’s just a thing, but it stands for something, and it helps me to remember what all of the things in my life actually mean.”

If I want to remember what a good man is, I try to remember him. If I want to remember “where” God is, I try to remember what he said to me.

6.41

Whatever the things that are not within your power, those that you assume to be good for you or evil, it must of necessity be that, if such a bad thing befalls you, or the loss of such a good thing, you will blame the gods, and hate men too, those who are the cause of the misfortune or the loss, or those who are suspected of being likely to be the cause.

And indeed we do much injustice, because we make a difference between these things.

But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God, or standing in a hostile attitude to man.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.41 (tr Long)

Many of us will be quite familiar with that moment in life when we truly recognize that people will not always do right by us. We can sadly twist it into an attitude that people will never do any right by us at all, a constant sense of suspicion and distrust. We may come to think of too many of our circumstances as threatening, hoping only to stumble across an opportunity here or there that might offer some benefit. I am all too prone to this weakness.

The danger here is actually far deeper than only being negative. While the optimist may expect things to go well, and the pessimist may expect things to go poorly, the misleading assumption in either case is that things will “go” well or poorly at all. For the Stoic, the good and the bad are not within the events at all. They are morally indifferent to us, becoming only beneficial or harmful through our judgment and choices about them.

Hardship, poverty, disease, or death are not inherently evil. Gratification, affluence, health, or long life are not inherently good. All conditions offers us the opportunity to do something with them, and thereby to define ourselves by the only inherent human good, the exercise of virtue.

As soon as I think of a situation as helpful or harmful in itself, I will swing wildly between dependence and resentment. My sense of happiness will rise when the world treats me in one way, and it will fall when it treats me in another. It is best not to attribute any moral worth to things that happen at all, but to see things that happen as a means to acting for myself with moral worth.

Now how often have I jumped for joy when I have been granted pleasure, and how often have I squirmed in anger when I have been given pain? There is either a wallowing in gratification, and the desire for more consumption that proceeds from it, or there is a simmering rage, and the desire for payback that proceeds from it. I can trace most every wrong I have ever committed to a weakness in the face of these two impostors.

I will save myself from so much of my vice and misery if I do not make any distinction between the good and the bad in external events. I will strengthen myself in virtue and happiness if I concentrate only on the good and bad in my own thoughts and actions.

As soon as I commit myself to my own character, which is within my power, instead of my circumstances, which are outside of my power, I will no longer need to cast blame, or embrace anger, or act with hatred toward either God or my neighbor. Where I do not perceive fault, I will not demand correction. I will seek only to correct myself.

6.42

We are all working together to one end, some with knowledge and design, and others without knowing what they do; as men also do when they are asleep, of whom it is Heraclitus, I think, who says that they are laborers and cooperators in the things which take place in the Universe.

But men cooperate after different fashions. And even those cooperate abundantly, who find fault with what happens and those who try to oppose it and to hinder it. For the Universe had need even of such men as these.

It remains then for you to understand among what kind of workmen you place yourself. For he who rules all things will certainly make a right use of you, and he will receive you among some part of the cooperators and of those whose labors conduce to one end.

But do not be such a part as the mean and ridiculous verse in the play, which Chrysippus speaks of.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.42 (tr Long)

Some things will act for the sake of the good through their own awareness and choice, while others will do so only from ignorance and necessity. Each sort will play a certain part, and I must decide of which sort I will have myself be.

“We’ll all end up right where we need to be,” my uncle once told me. “The only difference will be if we’re glad and willing, or kicking and screaming.”

Accordingly, I will do my best to always discover the good in whatever situation I find myself. This is hardly easy, because we are so used to thinking that the conditions make the man, instead of the man making something of the conditions. Yet however confusing the specifics may seem at the time, I can know with certainty that every circumstance offers an opportunity to choose to act well. If I renounce my freedom to do so, I will still be of service, but only as an opportunity for someone else to choose to act well.

What a wonderful way to also appreciate everything for its own sake. Even the most thoughtless and vicious man is here, as he is right now, for a reason. He may help me to do what is right for myself through his own wrong, but most importantly for his sake, he may learn to do what is right for himself through his own wrong. Providence will not only permit, but will always encourage, the choice of willing and joyful cooperation.

The reference to Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school of Athens, is about passages in a drama that are in and of themselves about immoral or foolish things, but still end up serving the larger purpose of the whole story. I think, for example, of how a vicious character in a narrative may well commit terrible deeds, or a buffoon may stumble about aimlessly, but in a certain way that very vice or buffoonery will become the occasion for moral improvement. It may serve as a contrast, or teach a lesson, or provide the very problem to be resolved.

Now I should never wish to be immoral or foolish, but if I stubbornly insist on following that path, I will still serve a purpose, just like the villain or the comic relief in a play.

As a student of mine once observed, knowing how much I love comic books, “Poor Lex Luthor! He always has some dastardly scheme, and he only ends up giving Superman the chance to put it right!”

Yes, even Lex has his place. Still, don’t choose to be like Lex.

6.43

Does the sun undertake to do the work of the rain, or Asclepius, the bringer of health, the work of the earth, the fruit-bearer?

 And how is it with respect to each of the stars, are they not different and yet they work together to the same end?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.43 (tr Long)

Each thing will play its own part within the whole. It may seem a small part, but that makes it no less important for the whole. It is a distinct and different piece, with a role only it is meant to perform.

I once had a beautiful vintage Rickenbacker 4005 bass guitar, complete with a stunning fireglo finish. Like any good Rickenbacker bass, it growled back at me whenever I played it. Heck, it growled back at me even when I looked at it. Whatever amplifier or effects I put it through, it would always sound like a beast just barely tamed.

There was only one problem. There was this little annoying buzz on the D and G strings, especially higher up on the frets. No one else seemed to notice it, but I certainly did.

“Can’t you hear that?” I’d cry.

“Nope. Sounds fine to me.”

I did everything I could to that poor instrument in order to find that one little flaw. I adjusted the bridge, changed the gauge of the strings, and I fiddled with the truss rod. I would even put my ear next to the tuning pegs while playing, convinced at one point that the problem must be there.

Then one day I suddenly saw it. I didn’t just hear it, but I saw it. A single screw on the top pickup was vibrating with the higher notes. What did it take? A mere quarter turn with a Phillips head, and the satanic buzz was completely gone.

Now this will tell you quite a bit about my ridiculous sense of obsession, but it also tells me quite a bit about the order of things. One tiny piece, the tiniest screw, made quite a difference in how that fine bass sounded to me. That screw didn’t have to be anything except itself, but it did have to be tightened just right to make the whole thing work just right.

Each kind of thing is different from every other kind of thing for a very good reason, because their individual natures serve within the relationship of all of Nature. The harmony is not from a mere conformity of identity, but from a rich complementarity of identity. This is true of any tool a man has made, however simple or complex, which is itself a mirroring of the pattern of all created things.

We will swing from insisting at one moment that everything needs to be the same, and at another moment that everything needs to be different. Sometimes we are enamored of unity, and sometimes we are drawn to diversity, and we will then foolishly oppose these principles to one another like jealous lovers.

What we might be missing is that things are indeed different, but they are different in order to serve exactly the same greater purpose. The many exist for the one, and exist within the one.

6.44-45

If the gods have determined about me, and about the things that must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought. And as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their Providence?

But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things that happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them.

But if they determine about nothing—which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice nor pray nor swear by them nor do anything else which we do as if the gods were present and lived with us—but if however the gods determine about none of the things that concern us, I am able to determine about myself, and I can inquire about that which is useful. And that is useful to every man that is conformable to his own constitution and nature.

But my nature is rational and social and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world. The things then that are useful to these cities are alone useful to me. . . .

. . . Whatever happens to every man, this is for the interest of the universal. This might be sufficient. But further you will observe this also as a general truth, if you do observe, that whatever is profitable to any man is profitable also to other men. But let the word profitable be taken here in the common sense as said of things of an indifferent kind, neither good nor bad.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.44-45 (tr Long)

I find time and time again that a great obstacle to moral health is the idea that what is good for me must surely be bad for another, and that what is good for another must surely be bad for me. It is the assumption that conflict, between the parts of the whole, or between the one and the many, is a necessary condition of life.

Yet Providence simply doesn’t operate that way. That which exists to give meaning and order to the whole, will truly be in service to the whole. Thankfully, the Universe isn’t run by the politicians, priests, businessmen, or lawyers who mouth the words, but fail at the task. The Divine Reason within the whole is not subject to selfishness.

Even if I have difficulty accepting that Providence cares about me personally, I can surely accept that Providence cares about the complete good. Am I not even then a part of the complete good, and therefore cared for?

Even if I cannot accept Providence at all, an understandable mistake if I were to consider only a human measure to things, I can surely come to discover that same truth within myself. If I reflect upon what is useful, beneficial or profitable to me, I can discern that anything and everything can be good for me, depending only upon my estimation and actions regarding these things. As a creature of reason, I am made to choose what is good through my own power, and all circumstances can be ordered toward what is good.

Insofar as I am a rational creature, I am also a social creature, made for deliberate cooperation, and as such nothing that is good for me is separate or opposed to what is good for others. My neighbor is not only the man down the street, or the fellow citizen of my nation, but also any fellow citizen of the world. If the exercise of wisdom and virtue is our shared goal, nothing need come between us.

I will only assume opposition between men when I pursue false goods. I may think that there is only so much wealth, or pleasure, or honor to go around, so I mistakenly think I must seize it from another. But if the human good consists in the excellence of only our own nature, demanding the possession of nothing beyond our own thoughts and deeds, then competition and war are an illusion.

In my second year of college, I had one of those moments where I realized how completely out of the loop I had managed to become. I was regularly listening to the new album by ABWH (Anderson/Bruford/Wakeman/Howe), one of the many variations of the classic progressive rock group, Yes. I very much enjoyed a track called “Brother of Mine”, and the lyrics simply fit so well into how I was slowly but surely beginning to see myself and the world:

Just hear your voice

Sing all the songs of the earth

Nothing can come between us

You're a brother of mine

Sing out your sisters

All the dreams of the world

Nothing can come between us

We are the travellers of time

Now admittedly, music of this sort isn’t for everyone, and the words of Jon Anderson could easily cross that line into what I often jokingly called the “twee-flakey-hippie-moonbeam-granola-crunchy” variety. Even so, the sentiment was pleasant and uplifting.

Not to a fellow student who saw me with the CD one day and gave me a good verbal thrashing, which ended with him throwing the jewel case against the wall. This sort of music, he yelled at me, was immoral, unpatriotic, communist, atheist, and all the other terrible things he could think of. He insisted that if he ever ended up ruling the world, he’d line up all the perverts who wrote this stuff and have them shot.

The last I had heard, he married a trophy wife, and was selling real estate in New Jersey.

I had a sort of epiphany right there and then. Some people really seem to feed off of facing people against one another. The fact that the good must be shared by all, not possessed by some at the expense of others, had suddenly never been clearer to me.

6.46

As it happens to you in the amphitheater and such places, that the continual sight of the same things and the uniformity make the spectacle wearisome, so it is in the whole of life.

For all things above, below, are the same and from the same. How long, then?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.46 (tr Long)

It is rarely that I will view a new film, or watch a new television show, or even read a new book, and not have a frustrating sense that I have seen all of this before. We don’t even try to conceal old ideas and plots within a new skin, but are quite happy to openly “reinvent”, “reboot”, or “reimagine” what came before.

There are some of what we now call “franchises” that I have seen brought back three times in the span of my life, differing only in the fashionable cosmetics of politics, in the platitudes that happen to be trendy at the moment.

That spectacle, the covering of tired formulas with new buzzwords, can be quite disturbing for me. I do not necessarily expect a completely new creation, because, after all, there is ultimately nothing new under the sun. But I deeply appreciate a different perspective, a transformation of what is already familiar into something I could not have expected. Therein is the originality of art.

I do not have a personal preference for the style or for the values of John Gardner’s Grendel, for example, but I have long deeply admired that incredibly clever turn on an old story. Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead had much the same effect on me.

I suspect the problem is, in the end, that most of us are hardly being creative or artistic at all. We are selling a product, and we are drawn to what wins a profit by means of the lowest common denominator. As it was in the Circuses of Rome, so it is in the Hollywood of America. And so it is in Washington, on Wall Street, and at the Ivy League schools.

And just as the pabulum of entertainment, politics, business, and academics becomes tiresome, so too life can sometimes feel like it is becoming old hat. There can always remain more good to be done, more paths to discover, or more work to give us purpose, but there also comes a time when we are ready to leave the ring, to depart this mortal coil.

We will have realistically seen what we can see, and we will have realistically done what we can do. Now it’s time to go.

I have become so familiar with the idea that a longer life is a better life, or that I must cling to existence with all my might and at any expense, that asking “How much more?” seems like a shameful surrender. Yet quantity should never be confused with quality. Living more isn’t living well. Living well is living well.

I should, I think, never seek death, but I should also never avoid it. It will come when it will come, and my only concern must be about getting my job done within the time prescribed. If I’ve done the job as best I can, there is nothing wrong in looking forward to a well-earned retirement.

My part to be played in the amphitheater is rightly only for so long. There is nothing shameful in wondering when the performance will be over.

6.47

Think continually that all kinds of men, and of all kinds of pursuits, and of all nations are dead, so that your thoughts come down even to Philistion, and Phoebus, and Origanion.

Now turn your thoughts to the other kinds of men. To that place then we must remove, where there are so many great orators, and so many noble philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates. So many heroes of former days, and so many generals after them, and tyrants. Besides these, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other men of acute natural talents, great minds, lovers of labor, versatile, confident, mockers even of the perishable and ephemeral life of man, as Menippus and such as are like him.

As to all these, consider that they have long been in the dust. What harm then is this to them, and what to those whose names are altogether unknown?

One thing here is worth a great deal, to pass your life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition even to liars and unjust men.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.47 (tr Long)

Some people might be famous for their various skills and achievements. Other people might be infamous for their various weaknesses and failures. Most of us are hardly thought of or remembered at all, and the qualities we so hoped would define us will be of no significance at all. The ornaments and trappings of life should never be confused with its true purpose and content.

Now a man might possess the gift of fine speech, or have an insightful mind, or be a conqueror on the field of battle, or be talented in ruling others. He may be quick to win a name for himself, and he may raise himself in power and influence.

None of this will make any difference at all, if it is not in the service, first and foremost, of being a good man. Integrity, fairness, and compassion will make all the difference, because they themselves are about the living, not about the conditions in which one lives.

I would always pride myself in not being impressed by people who simply looked attractive, or who were rich, or who were popular. Yet I would still let myself be drawn in by various other characteristics, such as a sense of wit, taste, or charm, and then I would wonder why I still wasn’t finding genuine friends. I may not have been falling for the usual traps, only a slightly less trendy set of traps. I was confusing qualities with character, swapping the attributes people had with the virtues of what they did.

I would then sometimes blame others for being selfish, deceptive, or thoughtless, when I only needed to take responsibility for myself in thinking they would somehow be giving, honest, and concerned, just because they happened to be smart or amusing. People will make their own choices for themselves, and it isn’t my place to make those decisions for them. But it most certainly is my place to stand by my own conscience, to admire and respect others for the right reasons.

It never came to me in a single moment, but I slowly began to realize that I was never going to be admired, respected, or listened to in this world. The things that interested me, and the values I thought best in life, were just not what most others cared for. Sometimes I might have felt angry with that, because it didn’t seem fair, or I might have felt sad about it, because I wished people could understand.

But it doesn’t need to breed resentment, and it doesn’t need to be a tragedy. I will only be worried about fortune and fame if I still think they are important in life. If I can only recognize that living well is simply good for the sake of living well, and nothing else above and beyond it, I won’t be caught up in the externals and the diversions.

It is a liberation, and not a burden, to understand what things in life are really worth, and to leave behind the charms of appearance for the merits of virtue.

6.48

When you wish to delight yourself, think of the virtues of those who live with you. For instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth.

For nothing delights so much as the examples of the virtues, when they are exhibited in the morals of those who live with us and present themselves in abundance, as far as is possible. Wherefore we must keep them before us.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.48 (tr Long)

Back when I was a young pup, I would probably have snorted and snickered at the claim that being moral was somehow pleasurable. I imagine many people think quite the same thing. There’s the right way, and then there’s the fun way. We’re somehow convinced that the two just don’t cross.

It’s a weakness we all share. We oppose the different aspects of our nature, that of our passions and that of our reason. We forget to find a balance within ourselves, and we perversely prefer to be at war with ourselves.

To keep myself from slipping back into that sort of an attitude, I need to constantly remind myself that what is good for me will be good for the whole, not for the part at the expense of the whole, and certainly not for the lesser part at the expense of the greater part.

The value of my feelings, and the depth of my pleasures, will be in direct proportion to the value of the actions from which they proceed. The value of my actions, in turn, follows from the right exercise of my reason, and my understanding of what is good, both for myself and for others.

It is only then that I see how the mere pursuit of pleasure, simply for the sake of gratification alone, was actually not so pleasing at all. Chasing after lusts becomes a sort of burden, even an enslavement, providing more misery than it does delight. The drunk struggles his way through another bottle, the adulterer gets tangled up in his lies, the grasping man lies awake worried about how he will hold on to his wealth. I end up chasing a contentment that never seems to come, always looking for more and more.

There is a perfectly good reason that the passions alone cannot satisfy me. My human nature is fulfilled by the dignity of my actions, not merely by the power of my feelings, and how I feel will depend upon how well I live. In this way, in an odd manner that I would hardly expect, virtue provides the deepest and most lasting pleasure, even in the face of all other sorts of suffering, because virtue is the very thing that makes me whole.

Whenever I have had the good sense to follow what is right first and foremost, I find myself slowly but surely discovering a habit of the deepest joy. Since I begin to be at peace with myself through my thoughts and deeds, I also come to be at peace in my feelings.

Then I will sometimes foolishly let myself be tempted by going straight for the gusto, assuming that such a path will be quicker or easier. After I see the wasteland I have made, I wonder what I possibly could have been thinking.

It is not only my own virtue that can delight me, but also surrounding myself with the virtue of others. It is not only a good example, but also a source of enjoyment to share life with friends who practice integrity, compassion, and justice. 

It is hardly an accident, therefore, that the most miserable times of my life were those where I attached myself to people consumed by vice, and the most joyful times of my life were those where I surrounded myself with people who inspired me with character.

So much of the true delight in life is indeed from the company we keep.

6.49

You are not dissatisfied, I suppose, because you weigh only so many litrae and not three hundred?

Be not dissatisfied then that you must live only so many years, and not more. For as you are satisfied with the amount of substance that has been assigned to you, so be content with the time.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.49 (tr Long)

I was a tiny fellow when I was a child, both shorter than all the other boys, and so skinny that you’d miss me completely if I was standing next to you sideways. I always wished I that was bigger and stronger, so that I wouldn’t be mocked and pushed around.

Adolescence suddenly gave me height, and I was then far taller than everyone else. Now I was an even more ridiculous beanpole. How I wished I had been made different, and how I wished I could change it all. But there was really nothing to be done about it. I could eat voraciously, I could go running for miles and miles, or I could do dozens of push-ups every day, but I never buffed out, as they say. That was the way that Nature had chosen to make me.

Since then, I have always felt empathy for folks who wish they were different, thick or thin, tall or short, broad or narrow. It was one part for me in understanding that the dignity of a person never has anything to do with height, or weight, or measurements. Dignity has everything to do with how we choose to live. 

How big or how small we are, or how big or how small we might wish to be, is not much different than how long or how short our lives will be, or how long or how short we might wish our lives to be. By all means, eat well, exercise, and go see your doctor, even when nothing seems to ail you. Providence, however, has assigned a time, just as Providence has assigned a measure for all things.

A very dear friend in high school, one of the few who didn’t choose to tell me I looked like a sickly AIDS patient, died in her third year of college. We usually bickered, and we often disagreed, but I always knew that she was someone I could trust absolutely. When she was gone, I was deeply affected by the fact that so many of the good folks seemed to die young, and so many of the bad folks seemed to be able to hang on forever and ever.

But there is never any good or bad in how long anyone lives, not in and of itself. My old friend died at the age of twenty, and in that time she managed to live with more character and commitment than most people can manage if they live for a century. To be content with whatever time may be given is never an act of surrender. It is an act of courage, an acceptance that comes from love, and never giving in to regret or resentment.

My friend from high school would often tell me how much it troubled her that she was quite short, and given that I was quit tall, we would have a good laugh about it all. Her passing made me think shamefully about how I had not been a decent enough friend for her, while she was still around.

There is the key, I think. Love while you can, with all of your heart, and with all of your mind, and with all of your soul. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

6.50

Let us try to persuade them, and even act even against their will, when the principles of justice lead that way.

If, however, any man by using force stands in your way, betake yourself to contentment and tranquility, and at the same time employ the hindrance towards the exercise of some other virtue.

And remember that your attempt was with a reservation, that you did not desire to do impossibilities. What then did you desire? Some such effort as this. But you attained your object, if the things to which you were moved are accomplished.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.50 (tr Long)

When I see others doing wrong, I need to ask myself what I should be doing in response. Now I notice many people simply looking the other way, assuming that conscience has nothing to do with their own profit. I would then, of course, become a wrongdoer myself, for the worth of our actions is both in what we do, and in what we leave undone.

Should I offer friendship and an appeal to reason, in an attempt to convince them of what is truly good? Yes, if my intent is properly sincere, and if I am informed by a sense of what is just. This is within my power.

Should I stand against them, even when they object or resist? Yes, if by doing so I can still make right of something that is wrong, and I aim at the benefit of all, not just of some. This is also within my power.

But what if I am opposed by a resistance that hinders me from correcting an error, or fixing what has been broken? This is no longer within my power. By stubbornly fighting back against what I cannot overcome, I will have failed to make the situation any better, and I will have only made myself worse by meeting an aggression with even more aggression.

When the path ahead is blocked, and I cannot pass through, I can, however, still pass around. If I am denied the chance to do what is right in one way, that very obstacle can offer me an opportunity to do right in another. If another turns away from me, I can still practice patience. If I am denied a fair hearing, I can still be understanding. If another meets me with hatred, I can still meet him with love.

I can continue to practice virtue in a new manner, though in a way that was different than what I may have originally intended. I must remember that each and every circumstance, however limiting it may at first appear, always provides a chance to act with integrity, compassion, and justice.

How often have we all seen people who find themselves in disagreement or conflict, and when an appeal to common sense is ignored, and when all other reasonable options for resolution have failed, they nevertheless still insist on fighting it out? That is then no longer a desire for finding a shared good, but simply the pursuit of destruction.

I once knew a fellow who felt that his own thoughtless omission, however unintended, had cost me something very dear to me. He asked me what he could do to make it right, but I was being cocky and foolish, and I turned him away. He then tried to fix the problem as best he could on his own, even as I remained headstrong, and he only desisted when I rudely told him to mind his own business.

Some time later, I ran across a wonderful, and completely anonymous, favor that had been done for me. I was deeply moved, but I could not figure out how it had come my way. As it turned out, it was a kindness given me by the very man I had so harshly cast aside. He had never said a word about it, and I only learned of it through others.

When I overcame my shame, I sheepishly approached him. “Why?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t let me tip the scales back how I wanted to, so I found something else. You locked your door, but you left your window open. I hope you’re not angry.”

I was hardly angry anymore. I learned something there that has stuck with me for years. If I didn’t obviously know any better, I’d swear he had been teaching me a loving lesson.

6.51

He who loves fame, considers another man's activity to be his own good.

And he who loves pleasure, considers his own sensations.

But he who has understanding, considers his own acts to be his own good.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.51 (tr Long)

This was one of the first Stoic passages I was ever exposed to. I only wish I had taken that wisdom to heart early on, instead of fighting against it for all of those years.

I attended a middle school where I finally learned something about math, science, and language. It was a parochial Catholic school, quite different from the rich and trendy public school, in supposedly the best side of town, I’d been at for seven years. It was also quite a bit rougher around the edges. I wasn’t quite prepared for the change.

I’d get pushed around for being different in elementary school. Now, I had the living crap beat out of me for looking at someone the wrong way. There were days, at the tender age of thirteen and fourteen, where I just wanted to die. I loved my teachers, and all that they explained to me, something I’d never experienced before, but a trip to the bathroom usually involved a humiliation or a beating.

There was a young priest who was our chaplain, a truly kind and decent fellow. He would come into our school once a week to offer a brief talk, and to give us an opportunity to have him hear our confessions. I would take that opportunity each and every time, not because I was a good Catholic, but because I wanted someone to listen to me, to understand me.

I would explain to him, time and time again, about how I felt worthless, and about how others seemed to take pleasure in putting me down. “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong!” I’d say to him. “They’re all worried about being popular and having their fun. Why am I so bad?”

He would sigh, and he would smile, and I knew that it didn’t come from dismissal or condescension. It came from genuine sympathy and understanding. “What makes your life good?” he would ask.

I would tell him all about my hopes and dreams, about wanting to make a difference, about being someone who mattered, about being that fellow who changes the world.

“Now do you want to be liked, and do you want to get drunk and high with those other kids? Because you won’t make a difference, at least not for anything good, if you go that way.”

I would nod and agree, but the pain didn’t go away. I once assumed I had wasted my time by speaking to a priest. What did he know?

He knew quite a bit, of course. I came back to school on a Monday morning, wearing my tie, because wearing a tie apparently made me better. I opened my desk, and found a note from the priest:

You may not know it, and you may not accept it, but you are a child of God. You are special. Don’t lose hope. Find hope in the right things.

His own words were followed by the passage from Marcus Aurelius quoted above, beautifully written by hand, with deep care and attention. It seemed like calligraphy. He had clearly spent time in writing it, and it was now the time for me to spend time in understanding it.

Do you love being popular? Good for you. Your life now depends upon others.

Do you love being gratified? Good for you. Your life now depends upon the objects of your desires.

Do you love the merit of your own thoughts and actions? Now that’s really what’s good for you. Now you have learned to be a human being, not a player or a tool.  

I still have that wonderful note. It sits on my bookshelf, right behind me, whenever I make my feeble attempts to think or to write.

6.52

It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul.

For things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.52 (tr Long)

My own disposition is a sensitive one, so I can easily become discouraged and disappointed by abuse, deception, or dismissal from people I would like to be able to trust.

Now sometimes I find myself blaming my own instincts, and sometimes I find myself blaming others for their vices. Neither path, however, will lead me to any peace. My passions will be as they are, and they have a way of working by their own patterns. The choices of others will be as they are, and they should never be confused with my own choices.

While I can’t usually determine how something will feel, and I can’t really determine what people will do, I most certainly can determine what I will make of those circumstances. I may have a feeling of pain, for example, when someone treats me poorly, but it will be my own judgment that informs the meaning I give to that feeling and to that action.

Whether I choose to use circumstances for my benefit, or choose to abuse them for my harm, or chose to disregard them entirely, will proceed only from my own estimation. My thinking is certainly not creating reality itself, but it is shaping how I will permit, or decide not to permit, that reality to affect me.

I should never think of any external event, or any impression that follows from an external event, as forcing me to consider it in one way or in another. The mind is not passively moved about by objects, but is rather an active principle that forms a conscious awareness of those objects. I can react in my own way, based upon my own judgment, and there is the good and the bad in it relative to me.

There is a liberation from the burden of conditions here, an embrace of true freedom in the face of outside forces. When I get angry at how I feel, or I resent what someone has done to me, I am doing nothing less than dodging my own responsibility for my own happiness. Blame can be so easy, because there is always an excuse. Accountability can be tough, because I need to be strong enough not to need excuses.

I need to avoid thinking that something is inherently good because it is attractive, pleasant, or convenient. I likewise need to avoid thinking that something is inherently bad because it is drab, painful, or difficult. The good or the bad in it for me will come only from the place, the meaning, and the importance I decide to give it.

6.53

Accustom yourself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, be in the speaker's mind.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.53 (tr Long)

I know immediately that I am listening in bad faith when I am simply letting someone speak, in the expectation that I can then speak my own mind when he is finally done. If I’m drawn to being especially self-serving, I may even interrupt him, or at least be certain to absolutely have the last word.

So many of our conversations are hardly even conversations. They are what I can only describe as mutual monologues. Like so many bad logical arguments, the start with our conclusions instead of ending with them, they deliberately distort the meaning of shared terms, and they change the subject whenever possible. Perhaps worst of all, they are prone to bringing people down, instead of raising people up.

Listening is not an easy task, because I need to remember that it isn’t only about my thoughts, about my mood, or about my own sense of importance. As a rational creature it is my duty to understand, and as a social creature it is my duty to express compassion and concern. What a wonderful chance I have to practice these virtues, when another asks me to listen to what he has to say.

Many years of teaching showed me that most every class, like most every group as a whole, will have at least one person who likes to object to anything and everything. A professional meeting is usually no different. I would have to prepare myself for the inevitable interjection of “Yes, but—“, regardless of the topic, and regardless of the perspective being addressed.

On my worse days I would consider it an annoyance, but on my better days I would try to view it as an opportunity. Instead of simply looking at it from my side, I could at least try to look at it from their side. What were these people actually trying to say, and why did they think it was important to say it? I might wonder about the soundness of their thinking, and I might question the integrity of their motives, but if I claimed to value the truth, then I could hardly offer any less than open ears and an open mind.

Minds are not meant to be cut off and separated into their own little boxes. A mind, by its very nature, is ordered toward other things, and especially toward other minds. Understanding seeks out what is true and good in a world we all share in common.

When I fail to listen, I fail to be aware of others for their own sake. When I fail to be aware of others, and I do not try to see things as they see them, I have also failed myself as a human being. I will have abandoned my own reason and concern as soon as I have cast aside their own reason and concern.

My own thinking can only be enriched when it accepts the thinking of others. I may not agree, and I may choose a different path, but I must first understand before I can either agree or choose.

6.54

That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.54 (tr Long)

The Stoic understands something about the relationship of the whole and the parts, both from the top down and from the bottom up, that I suggest we all very desperately need.

Many of us, for example, are willing to assume that what is good for the group as a whole is not necessarily good for all of its individual members. Whatever benefits the many may require conflict with what benefits the few, and while we may say that this is unfortunate, we will accept it as the way of the world.

Conversely, others will take it for granted that what is good for certain individuals will have to oppose any sense of a common good. In order for a few great people to succeed, many lesser people will have to fail. Those are the ropes, they tell us. Life will be tough. To make an omelet, you’ll have to break a few eggs.

I have seen it in politics, business, law, and education. I once saw it in the world of religion, when a diocese began shutting down parishes to cover the vast legal costs of paying for their abusive priests. In order for the Church to survive, they said, some of us were going to have to make some sacrifices. So the parish that gave me such comfort in my Wilderness Years, the church where I then met and married my wife, is now closed.

We seem to be in a constant pattern of opposition between the whole and the parts, swinging between the rights of many at the expense of the few, and the rights of the few at the expense of many. I’m sorry this isn’t good for you, but it is good for someone else, so you’re just going to have to suck it up.

Now why do we automatically think that this must be the case? Why are opposition and conflict, the failure of some traded for the success of others, considered to be the norm? Cooperation and complementarity should rightly be the full expression of man’s rational and social nature. It is hardly a pipe dream, because I do see it happening, in however small or unobtrusive a manner, on each and every day. People are at their best when they work together, not when they are broken apart.

Nature herself may seem full of violence and brutal competition, but we overlook there as well how everything that changes, all that comes and goes, does so as a part of a greater harmony. Death and birth are not evils. But greed, exploitation, and injustice are certainly evils. These are human vices, of course, something only the abuse of our reason and choice will bring into the mix, and something we can just as easily decide to walk away from.

What is right and good for the many is always right and good for the one, and what is right and good for the one is always right and good for the many. These two aspects are inseparable from one another. Virtue, the only complete human good, is never a resource or commodity we need to go to war over. There is more than enough to go around, if only we choose to live it.

6.55

If sailors abused the helmsman, or the sick abused the doctor, would they listen to anybody else?

Or how could the helmsman secure the safety of those in the ship, or the doctor the health of those whom he attends?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.55 (tr Long)

Few things are more helpful for a good life, and more demanding of genuine humility, than being willing to listen to the guidance from those who know far better than we do.

Pride will get in the way. The patient becomes sicker, because he refuses to take the doctor’s prescription. The ship founders on the rocks, because the crew has cast aside their helmsman. We won’t pay heed to what is best for us, because it takes courage and character to admit that we don’t always have the answers. Trusting in the right authority makes more, not less, of us.

Such a truth is hardly limited merely to the professional world, and applies to all aspects of our moral and personal growth. I cringe when I think of all the times I failed to follow good advice from decent people, about the careless habits of questionable people. I would stubbornly insist upon having my own way, and then I would cry and complain when I had ended up following the untrustworthy and unreliable folks.

But if I don’t know any better myself, how can I tell whom I should really be listening to? How do I know the doctor isn’t a quack? Is there way to tell if a man can really steer the ship, or drive the train, or fly the plane? Having him simply look the part, or carry the right credentials, or walk along with a confident swagger is, of course, hardly the same thing as knowing his business.

I have learned, and I have learned it the hard way, that I should trust the person who already shows me that he is living in peace:

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. You will know them by their fruits.

Or put another way, the reliable and trustworthy authority is the one who puts his money where his mouth is. He is showing you that he is worth listening to, because he is showing you the worth in his living. In the end, it’s always the moral compass that needs to point the way. Don’t trust a greedy man with your money, don’t trust a glutton with your health, and never fall in love with a player.

The advice works just as well when it comes to trusting the right authority within myself, just as much as it does to the right authority outside myself. When I am feeling tempted, or angered, or confused, or discouraged, will my first feeling offer the best guidance? No, it is the calm voice of reason I should be listening to, that one I can barely hear under all of the chattering of my excited passions.

Let the head rule the gut, not the gut rule the head.

6.56

How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.56 (tr Long)

When I was younger, I would often dismiss such concerns. Old people, after all, were the ones who had to worry about other old people around them dying. I was sure I still had some time left, before that reality hit me straight in the face.

I learned that I had been wrong for at least three perfectly good reasons. First, it assumed that what would come later was meaningless now. Second, it revealed a vanity in my own sense of security. Third, it all came to me quite a bit quicker than I expected.

I would often be told that youth was wasted on the young, and I resented such claims. People might not always be compassionate when they are saying it, but they do say it for a good reason. It wasn’t just that we were failing to plan for the future. In fact, I knew many young people who had their entire lives planned out. No, it was that we were planning for all of the wrong things. We wanted to be rich, gratified, and respected, and we wanted to keep that going for as long as we could. Our sense of morality, whether for now or for the future, was secondary to our sense of utility, whether for now or for the future.

At the same time, I saw loss in other people’s lives, but I took it for granted that none of that would happen to me. Youth made me invulnerable, I thought, even when I would dramatically claim that I had no intention of living past thirty. It all seemed more like a game than an actual reality. There would be much playing now, and no thought of any paying later. It should have come as no surprise that so many of the young and bright professionals I’d gone to school with went from strength to strength in their careers, while they were completely incapable of forming lasting and loving relationships with other human beings.

Then, far more suddenly than I could ever have expected, the changes set in. I had struggled with the passing of my elders before, but now I struggled with the passing of my peers. It seemed to pick up the pace before I could ever take proper notice. One died, completely unexpectedly, and then another. And then another. And I had failed most every time to make things right before they were gone. Others died in a different, more symbolic, way, because they moved away, lost interest, and because they no longer cared, and we no longer had anything in common.

I lost a fine friend from high school when I was in college. I lost a true buddy from college when I was in graduate school. I lost a fellow, who knew me better than I knew myself, just after I got married. Through all of that, people I loved and cared for slipped out of my life, having chosen different paths, never to be found again.

This will bring great sadness to anyone who still has a mind informed by a conscience, and a heart informed by love. It is also a perfectly good reminder for all of us that, whenever things come and go, we should be called to be the best of friends while we are all still here. It will all be gone before we know it.

6.57

To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those bitten by mad dogs water causes fear, and to little children the ball is a fine thing.

Why then am I angry? Do you think that a false opinion has less power than the bile in the jaundiced or the poison in him who is bitten by a mad dog?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.57 (tr Long)

The state of our bodies, the conditions we are subject to, and the objects around us can have a powerful effect on our feelings and perceptions. I still have a very vivid memory of one day trying to teach about the separation of the soul and the body from Plato’s Phaedo, and how these two aspects of ourselves exist in two very different realms. Yet I was suffering from a very nasty flu, and all I could think about was the aches and pains. I had also taken some pills that made my head quite fuzzy, which meant that there actually wasn’t much clear thinking happening at all.

There I was, trying to explain a great concept in the history of philosophy, and the room around me seemed to be a single pale color, the faces of others appearing as shapeless blobs, my head throbbing rhythmically, and I couldn’t quite feel my fingers as I tried to write on the blackboard. I had pushed myself too far, I realized, and now my very awareness was being assaulted on all sides by illness, weakness, and medications. It’s hard to speak about the purity of spirit, when matter is very busy pulling you down.

Now if outer circumstances such as these can so influence my experience, I think of how much more my own inner judgments will modify how anything and everything is apprehended. Instead of being pulled from the outside, I am being pushed from the inside. If I am thinking that something is bad, I will be moved to feel with pain and resentment. If I am thinking that something is good, I will be moved to feel with pleasure and desire. How I perceive events will be shaped by the measures of true and false, of right and wrong, that I am working with.

I have at some times surrounded myself with people who were cynical opportunists, and at other times put myself in the company of people who were dogmatic ideologues. As my own thinking gradually accommodated to theirs, the very way I saw things inevitably began to shift. The same situation appeared completely different to me, and my passions reacted accordingly, depending on the estimation I had adopted. What seemed beautiful or ugly, desirable or threatening, would change with my opinions.

What I needed to remember, however, was that while I couldn’t really control whether I got the flu, I could certainly control the root of my own estimation. The way the world looked to me would rise and fall with the merit of my own thinking, and the truth of my own judgments. A false appearance may follow from a fever, or it may follow from a false opinion, but while the former lay outside of my power, the latter was most certainly within my power. Let things in the world happen as they may, but let my thinking be my own.

A mad dog may bite, but my own disordered judgments are the more powerful, and the more dangerous, influence on my life.

6.58

No man will hinder you from living according to the reason of your own nature.

Nothing will happen to you contrary to the reason of the Universal Nature.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.58 (tr Long)

What more beautiful, and direct, expression of Stoic wisdom could we possibly find than this?

You are invincible, if only you understand what it means to live as a human being.

The world will never do you any harm, if only you understand the very purpose of the world.

Yet how this flies in the face of the usual conventions! The measure of a man, they tell us, is how much success he finds in the world, and depends upon the degree of wealth and esteem he receives from others. He excels when he wins at the game, he fails when he loses at the game.

But life isn’t a game, and it isn’t about winning or losing by the terms of others. Life is about only one thing, a choice, and a commitment in action to all of the things that follow from that choice. There are no odds, and there is no gamble. There is absolutely no risk, unless you decide to risk yourself on things other than yourself.

Who I am, right within my soul, is entirely up to me. Who you might be is entirely up to you. As regrettable as it might be, are we in conflict? I will respect how you may choose to think and live. But do not think, for one moment, that anything you say or do will force me to change how I choose to think and live. Use your reason to convince me, but never expect your power to coerce me.

You will never make me decide to be someone I refuse to be. Go ahead, take my money, my livelihood, my reputation, my liberty, or my life itself. There is no winning for you there, because the reason and choice of a single person, however isolated and alone he may be, can never be conquered.

Nor will a good person, committed to his character, yield to his circumstances. If I understand rightly that all conditions can serve my virtue, nothing that happens is ever a hindrance for me. It is an opportunity. That is the gift of Nature.

Sharing such simple thoughts with the biggest of bullies has revealed to me how completely powerless those bullies really are. They throw their weight around, but their weight is ineffective against the soul of another. They try to hurt even more, but they end up only giving others a chance to be better.

Others can never really hurt you, because you are yourself. Nature will never hurt you, because She made you to be yourself. She made you for Herself.

6.59

What kind of people are those whom men wish to please, and for what objects, and by what kind of acts?

How soon will time cover all things, and how many it has covered already.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.59 (tr Long)

As clear, direct, and simple as Stoic principles can be, I still find myself foolishly distracted by the conventions I see around me, and then I find myself doubting. I suppose this is because he who seeks a Stoic life pursues a transformation within the self, while the ways of the world encourage a dependence on everything outside the self. Sometimes, all the show and the bravado of grasping men can make me question my commitment.

And if I happen to have my head on straight, all I need to do is remember how absurd and ridiculous the ways of fame, wealth, and power really are, and how low I will need to stoop if I follow that path. Few things help me more than having a good laugh at my own expense.

If I wish to build my reputation for its own sake, then I will need to surrender my character in favor of making the right impression. The sort of people whose attention I seek will themselves admire status and appearance, and they will be pleased by veneration and flattery. Let the games begin! There is that perverse grappling to make it to the top of the heap, to be the first to be noticed, to tell the most convincing and impressive lies, to satisfy the vanity of bloated and self-important men.

What will all of this posturing get me? Access to bigger and better trinkets and playthings. So while half of me is busy sucking up to the big man, the other half is keeping watch over a growing pile of loot. The dog begs for the bone, and then he guards it jealously.

And throughout the whole process, I will have to sell my soul. I will have to lie, cheat, steal, betray, and generally become a vile and shifty person. I am trying to impress all the wrong people, in order to acquire more useless possessions, all the time neglecting everything noble within me, the only things that could really make me whole to begin with.

A witty friend of mine once observed how rich, spoiled, and vain people would always pretend to be enjoying themselves at parties and nightclubs, but you just had to watch the forced and painfully awkward way they danced to remember that you never wanted to become like them. I can do much the same when I need to knock some sense back into myself. I can stand back for a moment, and recognizes how foolish all those silly contortions really are, how empty all that begging for influence and position makes me.

All of it will be gone before I know it, and so much of it is already gone. How vain to think that fame is lasting, that wealth is reliable, that power is permanent.

Sic transit gloria mundi. So passes the glory of the world.