LIAM MILBURN: Living with Nature: Reflections on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 8

Living with Nature:

Reflections on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 8

Liam Milburn

8.1

This reflection also tends to the removal of the desire of empty fame, that it is no longer in your power to have lived the whole of your life, or at least your life from your youth upwards, like a philosopher; but both to many others and to yourself it is plain that you are far from philosophy.

You have fallen into disorder then, so that it is no longer easy for you to get the reputation of a philosopher; and your plan of life also opposes it. If then you have truly seen where the matter lies, throw away the thought, how you shall seem to others, and be content if you shall live the rest of your life in such a manner as your nature wills.

Observe then what it wills, and let nothing else distract you. For you have had experience of many wanderings without having found happiness anywhere—not in syllogisms, nor in wealth, nor in reputation, nor in enjoyment, nor anywhere.

Where is it then? In doing what man's nature requires. How then shall a man do this? If he has principles from which come his affects and his acts. What principles? Those that relate to good and bad, the belief that there is nothing good for man which does not make him just, temperate, manly, and free, and that there is nothing bad that does not do the contrary to what has been mentioned.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.1 (tr Long)

Philosophy can mean very different things to different people. To those completely unfamiliar with it, it takes on the quality of an extravagant luxury, a decadent pastime pursued by those who have their heads in the clouds, or who are simply too smart for their own good. In this light, I have often heard philosophy described as “a complete waste of time”.

Even among those who are acquainted with the study of philosophy, I have come across two very different attitudes, and I have found that they stand in sharp contrast to one another.

For some, philosophy is a career, an intellectual profession pursued by the rules of a completely closed system, and directed toward building one’s standing in the eyes of one’s peers.

For others, philosophy is a way of living, regardless of qualifications or status, and directed toward the improvement of the soul. It is the difference between being seen as a philosopher, and seeing the life of the philosopher as a way of being.

With Marcus Aurelius, I wonder how fame and reputation, looking toward how we seem to others, could really have anything to do with genuine philosophy. Let me not confuse appearance and reality, and let me remember that as soon as I choose to care for one over the other, I have committed myself to one over the other.

A fellow I knew, a philosopher in spirit if not in name, once asked me if I would prefer to be thought of as a smart man, or as a good man. I told him I’d like to be considered good.

“Hmmm. Now take it a step further. What if no one even thought about you as being good, or remembered you as being good? Would you still want to be good regardless? Or would you just stop caring?”

There’s the real distinction that matters. If I’ve been around this world long enough, I will surely see that the circumstances of our lives don’t always work out as we would have wanted them. I will also see that I have made many mistakes, and that I am not all that I would have wished to be. I will also see that playing intellectual games, or running after money, or looking important, or wallowing in pleasure will never make me happy. These are things that aren’t really about me at all.

So what remains? To be human above all else, before I try to call myself a philosopher, or a rich man, or a respected man, or a gratified man. This means looking beyond the trappings and accessories of life, and following my nature, pure and simple. I am made to know what is true, and to love what is good, and to therefore live in accord with wisdom and virtue.

Something is only good for me if it helps me in living well, and only bad for me if it hinders me in living well. Have I ruled myself with courage and self-control, and have I treated my neighbor with the respect and decency he deserves? The rest doesn’t really matter.

If I can overcome the powerful urge to appear right, and instead choose to be right, I am moving closer to real freedom. Fame is a vanity I cannot afford.

8.2

On the occasion of every act ask yourself, how is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it? A little time and I am dead, and all is gone.

What more do I seek, if what I am now doing is the work of an intelligent living being, and a social being, and one who is under the same law with God?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.2 (tr Long)

Looking at the winding narrative depicted on the Column of Marcus Aurelius, telling of the wars he led against Germanic tribes from 166 up until his death in 180, one sees the clashes of great armies deciding the fate of nations. Everything is in sweeping motion, grand in scale, and glorious to behold. The column itself was erected to honor an emperor’s great achievement, and it stands to this day in Rome. Those Romans certainly knew how to think big, to make a powerful impression, and to leave their mark on the world.

How odd and wonderful then that the same man who was so honored wrote the words in the passage above. He reflects upon who he is within himself, contemplating his own end, considering the worth of his own deeds. He doesn’t look to his political power, his economic achievements, or his military victories, but reviews only the content of his character. Has he let reason be his guide, shown his concern for others, and acted in harmony with Providence? What else could truly matter?

I would like to think that Marcus Aurelius had a very different sense of what constituted greatness than most other people of influence and power. The memoirs and diaries of politicians and generals will usually discuss their crucial place in important events, and we might find ourselves disappointed if we read only the humble thoughts of a man just trying to be a good man.

I am still amazed that if we overlook the first book of dedications, almost all the passages in the Meditations give no indication of the status of the author. He could be every man, most any person, and this is because he cuts to the heart of what it means to be human, at the most basic and immediate level.

So I may ask myself, just as he did, whether I have been understanding, loving, and reverent, firm in the knowledge that I don’t really need to ask myself any further questions.

I take it seriously that these are not questions I should only need to ask from time to time, in between all the hustle and bustle of everyday life, but rather questions I must constantly keep in mind, for each and every decision and action. They are a way of asking about the very be-all and end-all of my life. I am hardly facing my humanity if I neglect to do this.

I don’t need a glorious column to mark my achievements. I only need a decent soul within.

8.3

Alexander, and Caesar, and Pompey, what are they in comparison with Diogenes, and Heraclitus, and Socrates?

For they were acquainted with things, and their causes and forms, and their matter, and the ruling principles of these men were the same, and conformable to their pursuits.

But as to the others, how many things had they to care for, and to how many things were they slaves!

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.3 (tr Long)

I suspect we will sometimes just lump people together into a category of being “great” because they were somehow important, memorable, or influential. What we may be overlooking is the distinction between the quantity and the quality of their actions, between how much they did in the world and how well they lived in the world. Greatness can have rather different standards.

Alexander, Caesar, or Pompey can be considered great because of their power, while Diogenes, Heraclitus, or Socrates can be considered great because of their wisdom. The first group turned their attention outwards, to gain dominance over others, while the second group turned their attention inwards, to gain dominance over themselves. Most of us may be more impressed by the former, while the Stoic is far more impressed by the latter.

If I attend to my own nature, and to the improvement of what is my own, I should certainly wish to know myself, to know my place in the world, and to master my actions according to the measure of what is right and good. I can then be a free man, and even if I am never recognized for it, I will have shared in something great.

If I attend rather to everything other than myself, I will try to accumulate wealth, and status, and be driven by a desire to be loved or feared by others. I may think of myself as free, but I am actually a slave to what I seek to possess, and though I may gain recognition, my character will become weakened.

There are a number of anecdotes about Alexander the Great and Diogenes the Cynic, though the best known is probably the story of how Alexander came across Diogenes sitting in the morning sun, and asked the philosopher if he could do him any favor. “Yes,” replied Diogenes, “stand out of my light!”

I can understand that response in a few different ways, but all them point me back to the recognition that Diogenes was surely the better, and therefore also the truly greater, man. While one man had everything in the world and nothing within himself, another had nothing within the world and everything within himself.

I may complain that I am not an Alexander, that sort of “great” man, but if I consider it as honestly as I can, should I not prefer to be more of a Diogenes, the man they said was like a dog?

8.4

Consider that men will do the same things nevertheless, even though you should burst.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.4 (tr Long)

I can’t speak for the broad sweep of time, but in the decades I’ve been stumbling around this world, I can’t help but think that there is a recent trend for people to cast more blame, to cast their curses upon their fellows, and then to cast out whoever might offend.

It could well be that only my own sensitivities have changed, but I still seem to remember occasions when I found myself in a bind, and people far better than myself would tell me to accept that others would be as they would, but that I could always choose to be better myself.

I had a principal early in elementary school, as kind and as caring a fellow you could ever know, who always had his office door open for his students. I can still remember that tin of graham crackers he had by his desk, of which you were always free to partake when you walked by, in the expectation that you would tell him how your day was going.

He even once, for no special reason I could discern, made me a wooden pencil holder, complete with my initials, which still sits next to my desk so many years later.

If you were troubled or confused, you went straight to him. If he was on the phone when you walked up, he would tell the person on the line he would call back later.

I recall a day where I was especially upset about a certain fellow in my class who liked to put me down. I said what I felt, I whined and complained, and he listened.

“Well,” he said after a moment of silence, “I can punish him, remind your teacher to keep an eye on him, or I can even call his parents in. Do you think that would help? Is there also something you can do to help?”

He smiled as he said it, and I knew he wasn’t putting me down. He wanted me to figure out my own part in all of it.

I fidgeted, grumbled, and probably rolled my eyes, but I distinctly remember answering, “Well, I suppose I could try to be nice when he’s a jerk.”

“You’ll always find good people in this life, and bad people too, and a whole lot of people in between. You can’t always change them, but you can still be kind to them.”

Well. Who would have thought an elementary school principal in a sleepy and entitled suburb would inspire Stoic wisdom?

By the time I had become a teacher myself, things already seemed quite different. Any complaint, of any degree or seriousness, brought out the lash. If anyone accused anyone else, the problem was only ever addressed by punishing the supposed offender, often quite severely, according to the social fads of the moment. I have sadly seen both too many students and too many teachers have their futures destroyed by such wrath. Too much piss and vinegar.

If I choose to live that way, what have I actually achieved? Have I changed how another thinks, chooses, and acts? Or have I perhaps only filled myself with the same hatred and dismissal I am so angry about?

A different perspective? A dissenting view? Another frame of mind? Destroy it, for it does not fit my fancies!

My head may burst from my anger, and if I made a list of all the people who I feel have hurt me, I am sure I would explode. The fact that I am still in one piece is only due to a willingness to deflate myself, to respect others, and to struggle with improving who I am.

8.5

This is the chief thing: Be not perturbed, for all things are according to the Nature of the Universal; and in a little time you will be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrian and Augustus.

In the next place, having fixed your eyes steadily on your business, look at it, and at the same time remembering that it is your duty to be a good man, and what man's nature demands, do that without turning aside.

And speak as it seems to you most just, only let it be with a good disposition and with modesty and without hypocrisy.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.5 (tr Long)

I become frustrated with the world when my own estimation is out of proportion, when I make more of things or less of things than they actually are. If I magnify the weight of a circumstance or diminish the role of my responsibility, I am no longer working with the order of Nature, but rather against it.

No burden is ever so great as to be overwhelming, just as no opportunity is ever so small as to be insufficient. What has come to pass is as it is meant to be, and I can remember that whatever seems so powerful now will soon pass away with all other things.

Providence is the great equalizer, putting all things in their place, because while emperors like Hadrian and Augustus seemed mighty once, we will all come to our rest in exactly the same way.

Knowing this, nothing needs to be exaggerated or distorted, so I can rest content with pursuing a simple and steady path. Nature does not ask for anything too complex or disturbing; the demands of virtue will only appear impossible when my own thinking has gotten in the way.

A part of such a hindrance in my twisted judgment is when I confuse the mere act of doing what is good with all of the diversions and attachments I falsely assume must go along with it. I do not need to impose indignation or resentment on virtue. I do not need to be puffed up with my own vanity when I pursue virtue. I do not need to worry about how virtue may or may not appear to others. Any of those additions will, of course, make it cease to be virtue at all, much like over-salting a dish will always ruin it.

A good will, humility, and sincerity are essential to staying on that path of a good life, and malice, arrogance, and deception have no place in the order of Nature. If I only look rightly, I can see the difference between the virtuous man and the imposter. The fellow who is all about the saying becomes deficient in the doing, by shifting attention and focus from the purity of the deed to the profit of his circumstances. He exaggerates himself when he worries more about feeling good than doing good, and in doing so upsets his own relationship with the harmony of Nature.

All things are meant to be in their rightful place, in a proper proportion to one another. The confusion in my own mind will be the only hindrance.

8.6

The Nature of the Universal has this work to do—to remove to that place the things that are in this, to change them, to take them away hence, and to carry them there.

All things are change, yet we need not fear anything new. All things are familiar to us, and the distribution of them still remains the same.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.6 (tr Long)

What comes around, goes around. For many, this is just a platitude, words used so often they have lost their meaning. For the man who seeks wisdom it can still speak volumes.

Those things that are old become new, and those things that are new are also soon old, then becoming new once more. At the same time, it all comes around again, with the new taking upon itself the same order and pattern of the old.

The Book of Ecclesiastes said it best:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.

Whenever I despair about some new terrible threat coming our way, I must remember that it is nothing new. Whenever I latch onto the best new thing, I must remember that it is nothing new. The study of history is hardly a waste of time, because we will see constant change, even as the cycles of change reveal the same order within that constant change.

Now how many times have I heard that we were so much better or worse back then, or that we are so much better or worse right now?

“But back then, people practiced slavery!” We still do that, in a different form.

“But back then, people were more virtuous!” We still do that, in a different form.

“But back then, people were oppressed!” We still do that, in a different form.

“But back then, people knew what it meant to love!” We still do that, in a different form.

Let us stop playing the game of all things being so different. All times reflect expressions of human nature, themselves an expression of Universal Nature.

Man is given by Nature the power to think and live as he chooses. This is not a mistake of Providence, but a blessing of Providence. When he chooses well, he freely participates in all that is beautiful. When he chooses poorly, he still participates in all that is beautiful, as his choice turns back upon itself, and allows for the opportunity of better choices.

Everything is new in one sense, and nothing is new in another sense. There is no contradiction here, if it is understood rightly.

8.7

Every nature is contented with itself when it goes on its way well; and a rational nature goes on its way well when in its thoughts it assents to nothing false or uncertain, and when it directs its movements to social acts only, and when it confines its desires and aversions to the things which are in its power, and when it is satisfied with everything that is assigned to it by the Common Nature.

For of this Common Nature every particular nature is a part, as the nature of the leaf is a part of the nature of the plant; except that in the plant the nature of the leaf is part of a nature that has not perception or reason, and is subject to be impeded.

But the nature of man is part of a Nature which is not subject to impediments, and is intelligent and just, since it gives to everything in equal portions and according to its worth, times, substance, cause, activity, and incident.

But examine, not to discover that any one thing compared with any other single thing is equal in all respects, but by taking all the parts together of one thing and comparing them with all the parts together of another.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.7 (tr Long)

I can respect the eagerness of others in attempting it, but I cannot find my way to separate a Stoic life from the order of the whole. I cannot remove my own nature from the fullness of all of Nature. I cannot speak of my own freedom, dignity, and worth, without understanding it within the context of the freedom, dignity, and worth of all things.

I cannot wrap my mind around an isolation of myself from all beings, and I cannot recognize my own reason without Universal Reason.

Whatever the depth or breadth of my own understanding, I cannot conceive of a Universe without the immanence of the Divine. It isn’t for any want of trying. I have sometimes thought it easier to focus only upon myself, and to assume that all the rest is nothing but muddled chaos.

But it can’t be muddled chaos, and it has nothing to do with what I might prefer, and everything to do with what sound thinking tells me must be true. I cannot accept rational purpose in my own life outside of the rational purpose in everything.

We argue all about the delineations of what we think is or isn’t God, and all of the time we are forgetting that God, by an odd version of a definition, has absolutely no delineations. That which is perfect, complete, and infinite has no boundaries.

I was at first offended, and then later deeply moved, when someone told me to stop blaming God and religion for my own ignorance and weakness.

“It’s like saying that all food is bad because you messed up the recipe for a good meal.”

Who I am is nothing without the context of what all is. Now while some see the all as an extension of the self, assuming that what seems good for me is the source of everything that is good in itself, I suggest that the Stoic, as any right-thinking person, must see it quite differently.

The per me is in service to the per se, and should exist in harmony with it, and in obedience to it. I cannot think of Stoicism, or the truth of any philosophy or theology, outside of this all-embracing context.

The part mirrors the whole, and the whole fulfills the part. I am also a part that is not merely moved about unknowingly, but I am a part that acts with awareness. That particular awareness reflects the Awareness behind everything. That awareness exists to have its place in the plan of Awareness. That is humility, that is love, and that is piety.

What may be so small, much like myself, is no less significant because it is a piece of the whole. Rather, it is an emanation of the whole. What is small is a copy, in a sense, of what is large. Let us certainly see the whole in different ways, and from different perspectives, but let us never think of ourselves, as thinking beings, as separate from Thinking Being.

8.8

You do not have the leisure to read. But you have the leisure to check arrogance.

You have the leisure to be superior to pleasure and pain.

You have the leisure to be superior to love of fame, and not to be vexed at stupid and ungrateful people, and even to care for them.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8,8 (tr Long)

“Oh, I’m so busy! I just don’t have the time anymore to do all the things that I’d like to do!”

That is indeed true. But do I still have the time to do all the things I need to do?

So with only so much time, what do I pursue and what do I neglect? I commit myself to my profession, of course, that makes me money, and to my social life, that helps me promote my reputation, and to my various diversions, that help me to increase my gratification. All of that will apparently help me to feel better about myself, and to make me be important.

Quite right. After all of that, there probably won’t be much time left for anything at all. I can then congratulate myself on a job well done, and laugh about how I wish I could do more.

Or I could just start doing different things. I could choose to finally become a good man, instead of simply reading books about being a good man. Where are the priorities?

Time is best spent upon what matters. I could choose to love, rather than profit. I could choose to show mercy, instead of looking to the bottom line. I could choose to care, instead of dismissing. I could choose to give, instead of receiving. In fact, I could see that it is by my giving that I actually receive.

“It’s nothing personal,” they say. No. Everything is personal, because everything is about our social nature, our nature to live in justice with others. Remove justice from the equation, and you have removed everything of human value. Every single thing. You have made your neighbor a disposable commodity.

So I ask myself, how can I be too busy to love? What else could be more important than that? I look at my own need, and I see an empty hole, the one left by my unwillingness to offer rightly of myself, in contrast to offering others for myself.

I look to the Good Samaritan, that fellow some thought of as the filth of the earth, who gave of himself to be the fruit of the earth. Not a religious sort of fellow? Not a problem. Love shows no bounds. No man can ever be too busy to show concern. The commitment itself takes no time at all, though the nature of that commitment will change most everything else to which I dedicate my time.

I may not have the time to read, but I always have the time to live well.

8.9

Let no man any longer hear you finding fault with the court life, or with your own.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.9 (tr Long)

When I complain about the world around me, what disturbs me is beyond my power to control, and so I only frustrate myself. When I complain about myself, what disturbs me is completely within my power, and so I have no need to become frustrated. The blame is pointless in both cases. Let me correct what I can, and make the best of what I cannot.

Someone once told me that anger was a way of punishing myself for the mistakes of others. That helps me to put myself right, even when I can’t put others right.

Now once I began to make a conscious effort not to find fault, and instead simply to do good, I thought it would be harder for me to stop blaming others, and easier to stop blaming myself. After all, I usually go wrong by making too much of myself, and making too little of others.

To my surprise, I found the exact opposite to be the case. Understanding others, accepting others, forgiving others, even loving others, turned out to require less effort than understanding myself, accepting myself, forgiving myself, and especially loving myself. I was so used to casting resentment outwards, I wasn’t even aware how much more I was casting inwards.

The greatest obstacle in my own life, and the situation that most fed my Black Dog over many years, would give me an excuse to swing back and forth between being angry at someone else and being angry at myself. I have somehow managed to sufficiently tame the former hatred, but I continue to struggle with the latter. I am still catching my habits up to my thinking.

Perhaps I have come to rightly accept that another’s past actions are something I can’t change, but I am still somehow insisting that I can magically go back and change my own past actions. I can’t do that either, of course, even as I can certainly change myself right here and now. That doesn’t erase my past mistake, but it does break it down, rebuild it, and transform it into something better.

I squirm and despair about what I have done, and so I forget about what I can now do. Blame is not required, but improvement is required. When the fault is removed, regret can pass away.

Let it be, or make it right. Accept it, or change it. Knowing the difference between these two realms is really about knowing the difference between what isn’t mine and what is mine. I think it no accident that this is a form of the Serenity Prayer in action. It is about taking responsibility for the right things.

8.10

Repentance is a kind of self-reproof for having neglected something useful; but that which is good must be something useful, and the perfect good man should look after it.

But no such man would ever repent of having refused any sensual pleasure. Pleasure then is neither good, nor useful.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.10 (tr Long)

I can think of all the things I have felt sorry for, all of the thoughts and deeds I have regretted. Even as I write, the very memory makes me grit my teeth. I repent of deception and lies. I repent of manipulating and stealing. I repent of anger and hate. I repent of taking more than my share, and leaving another less than his share. I repent especially of lust instead of love, desire instead of compassion.

Yet at no point have I ever felt the need to repent of a virtuous act. I may question it, I may doubt it, and I may worry about all the consequences of following my conscience, but I have never done myself wrong by doing what is right.

And that should tell me something very important: if it’s really good, there’s never any reason to take it back.

“But life is about having fun!” That sounds great, until fun stops being just enjoying something pleasant, and becomes the pursuit of the destructive. What seems so fun can so quickly become something quite bad. Any glutton, any grasping man, any addict will admit this, however begrudgingly. If it made you so happy, why did it hurt you so much?

College was not a good time for me. One could find decent folks hiding out in the corners, but by and large it was an orgy of pleasure.  It was considered a badge of honor to pass out, to wake up in a strange bed, to have had one’s way with as many people as possible. That was the norm for most of the kids at a fancy school. Now were we any better, or happier?

Who lives under the illusion that people raised for four years to be barbarians will suddenly become civilized when they graduate? We certainly didn’t. We kept up the same old games, but under the appearance of prim and proper decency. Put fancy suits on animals, give them important jobs, and demand good manners of them, but you still have animals. They gave us all the credentials, but cared nothing for our character.

I fought it for years, with tooth and nail, but I finally saw that I could not be a creature of gratification. Some pleasures are truly divine, and others are truly demonic. What makes them different? The enjoyment of virtue is sublime, and the enjoyment of vice is brutal.

Pleasure can indeed be a good. Yet I choose to see it not as the cause of my happiness, but as a consequence of my happiness. How well I feel is measured by how well I live, and only the best actions will result in the best pleasures. Let me compare the pleasures that came from my own selfishness with the pleasure that came from sincere love. The difference is like that of night and day.

When Marcus Aurelius says that pleasure is neither good nor useful, this rubs us the wrong way. We live in a society that glorifies pleasure. But it really isn’t good in itself, because some pleasures are good for us, as others are bad for us. It isn’t really useful either, because it is a consequence, and not a cause.

I enjoy fun as much, if not more, than any other guy. I am also trying to learn that the value of the fun is relative to the value of what is true, good, and beautiful.

8.11

This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution?

What is its substance and material?

 And what its causal nature or form?

And what is it doing in the world?

And how long does it subsist?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.11 (tr Long)

Consider how often our own estimation adds qualities to things that are not actually present within them. That an image is attractive, or a sound is frightening, or a taste is unpleasant says something about our judgments, but not immediately about the thing that is perceived. I have already added my own interpretation to an experience, and so I have already intermixed what something is with how it seems to me.

Contrary to what the hopeless skeptic might say, however, what the mind has added in its judgments, the mind can also take away. Let me consciously peel away what I can recognize as being my own imposition, and let me consider what remains only within a thing itself.

Suddenly it will not appear so enticing, or terrifying, or painful.

What defines it for itself, and not just for me? What is it made of? Where did it come from? What is its purpose, as distinct from any purpose I may imagine for it?

Very often, it is only my ignorance of what I see that causes me confusion or anxiety. Understood for its own sake, I can gladly accept that it has its rightful place, just as I have mine, and that I can be in control of what I make of it for myself.

Something is no longer a mystery if I can take it apart, look at it from different angles, and observe how it behaves. I do not need to be afraid of it, or angry at it, or overwhelmed by it.

Last but not least, if I perceive that it is hardly permanent, and that it too shall pass, as all things must pass, I will never need to find it insurmountable.

When I say that something hurts, for example, I can examine both the object and myself, and I can understand the source of that feeling. Then I will decide what I will make of it, knowing full well that both the object and myself are here as they are for a reason, and that they are here for only a time.

This is not a pipe. It is an image that represents a pipe. This is neither a duck, nor a rabbit, but a series of lines that can be seen from different perspectives. This is not a beautiful young woman, or a hideous old lady. So too, this event or that experience is not the best thing that has happened to me, or the worst thing that has happened to me, but will only be as important to me as I judge it to be. This way I can always make everything good for myself by how I employ it, and bad for myself only if I abuse it.

You didn’t break my heart; I chose to consider myself injured. It didn’t make me lose faith; I chose to no longer believe. Death is not an evil; I chose to be afraid.

8.12

When you rise from sleep with reluctance, remember that it is according to your constitution and according to human nature to perform social acts, but sleeping is common also to irrational animals. But that which is according to each individual's nature is also more peculiarly its own, and more suitable to its nature, and indeed also more agreeable.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.12 (tr Long)

I was raised with a certain no-nonsense Old World discipline, and so as a child it never really occurred to me that the evening wasn’t the time for going to sleep, and that the morning wasn’t the time for rising. If we didn’t like it, we were politely but firmly reminded to do as we were told. If we pushed the point, we were treated to stories about the hardships during the war, and how grateful we should be for what we had.

As I grew older, therefore, I was a bit surprised to see so many of my friends staying up for much of the night, and sleeping for much of the day. I also wondered why so many of them seemed so irritable and unsociable during the few daylight hours they were actually conscious, and then only became approachable with the aid of alcohol as the night went on.

And, for a time, having let myself be beaten by disappointment and resentment, I began doing much the same. I would get done whatever I had to do, but I would avoid being in the world, showing any sort of real caring, if I could manage to avoid it. Sleeping half the day seemed a way of numbing myself, of not even being conscious that I should be a human being, living and acting together with others. And the more I curled up and shut my eyes, the crankier I became.

It took reflection on who I was to start breaking out of that cycle. I knew that I was more than a plant, and more even than an animal, and that I was hardly living up to what I should be. Mere force of will, however, was never enough, and setting myself great goals was never enough either, because I was thinking only about the big picture, and neglecting all the details. So I would commit myself to humble and achievable tasks, all of them reminders of what it meant to be human. No one else might notice them, but I would.

I would be certain to make it to the local store in the morning to have a brief chat with a fellow who smoked a stinky cheap cigar. If I dawdled, I would miss him, and he’d berate me the next day. I would get to the library when it opened, and greet the nice lady who unlocked the door. When I taught my first class, I would be sure to be cheerful with my sleepy students, instead of glaring at them with annoyance.

None of it was earth-shattering, and none of it was terribly noble, but it got me up in the morning, because I knew that such small acts of being decent and sociable were the key to recovering a sense of involvement. It didn’t always work as I intended, but it set me on the right track.

Being awake, literally or figuratively, can sometimes feel uncomfortable, but at least there is always something I can do to be better, instead of doing nothing at all.

8.13

Constantly, and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physics, of Ethics, and of Dialectic.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.13 (tr Long)

The Stoics often distinguish between three disciplines or branches of philosophy: Physics is about the natural order, ethics is about the morality of our actions, and dialectic is about the right use of our reason.

These do not exist in separation or isolation from one another, but are all concerned with understanding different aspects of the world, and of our place within it.

We will now often compartmentalize or pigeonhole different subjects, but the Stoic mindset is always built upon the unity and harmony of all things. It helps me to think of this as the necessary relationship between how the Universe works, how I should choose to live within it, and by what means I can employ my reason to understand this. No one of these can exist without the others, just as no part can have any meaning outside of the whole.

We will also now often think of disciplines completely in abstraction, as the pursuit of theory removed from practice. How often have I heard students telling me that algebra and chemistry have nothing to do with their lives, as well as seen professional academics failing to serve others through their profound studies? Yet for the Stoic, theory and practice are two sides of the same coin; thinking and doing are inexorably joined.

In this light, it should not seem odd that Marcus Aurelius asks us to always consider the nature of being, the nature of what is good, and the nature of what is true. He isn’t asking us to get lost in obscure corners of specialized studies; he isn’t asking us to put our noses in books, or hide our heads in the clouds.

He is rather suggesting that we look at every experience, and at every action, in the context of the whole. He is simply saying that we cannot live well without thinking rightly.

There can be no meaning in life without grasping how things work, there can no purpose in action without the awareness of a goal, and there can be no knowledge at all without the discipline of an ordered mind. I must look at everything that happens to me, and everything that I do, within the complete pattern of everything else.

This is hardly too obscure, for anyone at all, because it is nothing else than the fullness of human life. Philosophy is not a luxury, but a necessity. A man can still be happy without a fancy trade, but he can never be happy without a sense of who he is and where he belongs.

Anything less is just stumbling about blindly.

8.14

Whatever man you meet with, immediately say to yourself: What opinions has this man about good and bad?

For if with respect to pleasure and pain, and the causes of each, and with respect to fame and ignominy, death and life, he has such and such opinions, it will seem nothing wonderful or strange to me if he does such and such things; and I shall bear in mind that he is compelled to do so.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.14 (tr Long)

Instead of only looking at what people do, I am best served by also understanding how they think. I may find myself surprised by their actions, but this is far less likely if I have a heads up on their motives.

I cannot know what is deep in their hearts and minds, of course, and people can have a way, both wonderful and frightening, of changing their ways, but more often than not, what they are going to do is already clear from what they have revealed about their values.

What have they shown about their sense of right and wrong? How do their passions affect them? Do they follow after what others may think, or does conscience lead them? Do they simply want to live, or do they care more for living well?

It can take quite some time to truly know someone, but I am amazed at how quickly a man’s most basic principles become apparent. I may have chosen not to look carefully, or I may have brushed aside what was actually quite clear to me, but I have usually had it within my power to know what made him tick.

I could have known, but I chose not to know, and then I acted all hurt and betrayed, insisting that someone had fooled me, when I had only fooled myself.

When I see someone who is full of himself, who manipulates, gossips, complains, demeans, or holds a grudge, I am already quite privy to what he cares about. That I cannot expect love from him, or loyalty, integrity, self-control, justice, or compassion should already be clear.

Two great benefits will follow from inquiring into the opinions of others. First, once again, I have a good hunch about what is coming my way, but also second, I myself will be more able to act from sympathy instead of anger. If I understand why they act, I will be aware of how they saw some good within it, however mistaken they may be. I am hopefully then more inclined to help than I am to hurt.

How much happier would I be if I had only decided not to commit my trust to someone untrustworthy, or refused to follow ideologues who said one thing but did another? If I had just looked carefully, I would have saved myself the grief. The past can’t be helped, however, even as I have learned for the present.

8.15

Remember that as it is a shame to be surprised if the fig tree produces figs, so it is to be surprised if the world produces such and such things of which it is productive.

And for the physician and the helmsman it is a shame to be surprised if a man has a fever, or if the wind is unfavorable.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.15 (tr Long)

I once listened to a woman, during one and the same conversation, explain to me both that it was fair for her to abandon her husband, while also unfair of her son to abandon her.

Why can’t he just get over it? I don’t love him anymore. He needs to move on!

And then later. . .

How can he treat me that way? Doesn’t he know that love isn’t something you just turn on and off?

It was a stark and powerful reminder of how we wish to be the masters of our circumstances, how we expect to receive what we want and be spared what we don’t want. We pursue this even to the extreme of holding completely contradictory views of love, depending upon our own fickle desires. Other people can be disposable or irreplaceable, and we are shocked when the situation doesn’t cooperate as expected.

But we should never be taken aback by any situation, and we should understand that all conditions can serve us rightly, if only we view them in the context of our own responsibility. I may or I may not prefer this or that development, but all that remains for me is to meet it with virtue. I may not have predicted its arrival, but I can be prepared for it nonetheless. I am ready if I can decide to give love, even if I may not always receive it.

A plant may produce fruit, a man may become sick, and the weather may suddenly change. Now I may treat one of these as good, or another as bad, but they are really all the same, because they are all a part of Nature unfolding as it should. Let me follow it, and let me discover what is good within it, and let me do what is right from it. Let me harvest if I am a farmer, or heal if I am a doctor, or adjust the sails if I am a captain.

Above all else, let me act with wisdom, with courage, with temperance, and with justice in all things, simply because I am human. Then I am prepared for all things, and then I will do right by all things. And when it is my time to go, let me go with dignity.

Has the whim of my affection for another shifted, or has the affection of another changed with time? These things will indeed happen, but whatever may happen, I am the one who will decide whether I will have the decency to love. That way nothing ever comes as a surprise, and every circumstance will yield good fruit.

8.16

Remember that to change your opinion and to follow him who corrects your error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in your error.

For it is your own, the activity that is exerted according to your own movement and judgment, and indeed according to your own understanding too.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.16 (tr Long)

I’ve heard all sorts of explanations as to why I should be thinking this or doing that. I should be doing what everyone else is doing, just because they are doing it, or I should be doing the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing, just because they are doing it.

One answer is to follow what is popular, while the other is to be deliberately unpopular, and what is lost in the middle of it all is a novel idea, simply thinking or doing something because it is right, regardless of who may or may not be promoting it.

I suspect our options are limited by an unhealthy concern with how we are seen by others. Should we come across as team players, or as daring individualists? But as long as the choice is the right one, does it even matters how we are seen, or how we got there?

A decision is no more or less my own, whether I have arrived at it alone or with others. My thoughts are still my own thoughts, my judgments still my own judgments, and my choices still my own choices. My approval or disapproval, my consent or opposition, always proceeds from me, both when I do so wisely or foolishly.

I am no worse or weaker if I follow good advice, just as I am no better or stronger if I ignore good advice. Why must I be so stubborn and arrogant as to not allow another to help me make myself better? Am I resisting his correction because it is wrong, or because I don’t want to be perceived as being wrong? Once I have fixed what is broken within me, nothing will be wrong anymore, and so that should be my priority.

Some people choose not be informed by any conscience at all, and replace a sense of right and wrong with a measure of gratification and calculation. Others, however, may be quite aware of their mistakes, but find it difficult to confront them. I spent too many years feeling that to say I was sorry, and to change my ways, would somehow make me lose face. What I had to learn was that admitting responsibility, and finally embracing it, was actually the strongest and bravest thing I could do.

If someone tells me that I am mistaken, whatever his own intention may be, I do not need to get caught up in a conflict about power and position. The only power that matters is my own power to make my own judgment, and that should follow only from the truth of what is said, regardless of who may have said it.

8.17

If a thing is in your own power, why do you do it? But if it is in the power of another, whom do you blame—the atoms of chance or the gods? Both are foolish. You must blame nobody.

For if you can, correct that which is the cause; but if you cannot do this, correct at least the thing itself; but if you cannot do even this, of what use is it to you to find fault? For nothing should be done without a purpose.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.17 (tr Long)

I feel like I want to cringe when I think of how often I have cast blame, of how deeply I convinced myself that I could avoid taking responsibility for myself by accusing another, and how deluded I became when I constantly passed the buck.

I chose to do this entirely on my own, but I made excuses by insisting that everyone was doing it. In politics, our party was right and theirs was wrong, and so if anything went poorly we knew exactly where to look. In religion, we were going to heaven and they were going to hell, because the only way we could feel like saints is if we made other people look like sinners. In the day-to-day, I could puff myself up by bringing others down.

Marcus Aurelius here reiterates the central Stoic principle that whenever it is within my power, I can choose to make it right, and whenever it is outside of my power, no amount of blame will ever make it right. I am what I am, and it is what it is, and resentment doesn’t change that.

So I struggled with trying to blame other people less, and taking responsibility for myself more, but I noticed that even harboring the tiniest bit of disapproval and accusation was still making me sick inside. It seemed like I would have to go cold turkey, and that this would have be an all or nothing sort of a deal. That would make sense, of course, because I can’t have it both ways, simultaneously being accountable for myself while still pointing the finger at someone else, however timidly or politely.

Now I can still know full well that someone has done something wrong, and I don’t need to go to the opposite extreme of making excuses for it, but instead of getting indignant, I can try to understand. Instead of being hateful, I can choose to be compassionate. Instead of holding a grudge, I can dare to offer friendship.

How can I make things better, instead of making myself worse by obsessing about it all? If I can do something good, there is no need for complaint, and if I can’t do anything at all, there is no need for complaint.

So instead of condemning just a little bit, which can easily turn righteousness into self-righteousness, I don’t need to condemn at all. Old habits die hard, but when I feel like turning up my nose as I walk on by, I can just as easily smile.

8.18

 That which has died falls not out of the Universe.

If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the Universe and of yourself.

And these too change, and they murmur not.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.18 (tr Long)

When I was little, I worried about whether I was going to Heaven or Hell. Fire scared me. I had the benefit of a fine man, an uncle who was a priest, who reminded me that the love of God was never about a balance sheet, and that if God is Love, no person, not any person, who truly wishes to be happy shall ever be denied that wish.

“God will give you exactly what you need. Ask, and ask with all sincerity, and you shall receive.”

Years later, people who thought they were better told me that my uncle was completely wrong. I was told I needed to follow this specific rule or that, and that any transgression meant instant damnation. I had to go to this Mass, and not another. I had to cross myself one way, and not another. I had to receive the Blessed Sacrament in one way, and not another. I should never, above all else, have anything to do with any of those terrible heretics. They were all damned.

“But isn’t God Love?” I asked.

“Of course you’d say that, because you’re a modernist.” I can still recall the smug look on the spiteful fellow who said that to me. He wanted me to fight him, intellectually at least, but I was smart enough that time to turn away. A broken jaw might have done him good, but a sense of temperance did me much better.

Fine. Send me to your Hell, because I refuse to believe in a Heaven where kindness and respect are trumped by stuffy and narrow arrogance.

I am still completely committed to living a good life, but I now worry less about where I am going to go, and more about who I am, right here and now.

I know there is a God, and I know there is a right and wrong in the order of all things, the design of Providence. Now what will become of me?

Let Providence decide that, and let me simply be the best man I can possibly be. I know, from reason alone, that I will continue in some way. What will that be? It is hardly for me to decide. Let God decide.

God, in whatever way we might wish to understand Him, has told me, simply by making me as I am, about how I should live. There is no mystery there.

What happens to me when I die? I can worry, I can fret, I can pray myself stupid, but it will happen exactly as it should. Nothing in Nature dies, as everything in Nature is constantly reborn. Nothing ceases to be, as everything that is simply takes on a new form.

Yes, there is a mystery there. I don’t know at all what that form will be. I leave that to God. I will become something else. Perhaps I may be a saint in Heaven, or perhaps just be fertilizer for a tree. I remind myself that if I think the difference matters, I’m not doing it right at all, because then the good that I do is all about some mercenary reward.

Nothing hurts religion, which should be about our trust in what is greater than us, than people who tell us that they are greater than us. No more of that for me.

Nothing ever really dies. Everything is reborn. How will that happen? Let Providence work that out. How arrogant of me to think I know how that might go.

My uncle prayed with simple folk, and taught at a high school, and climbed mountains, and told me about human decency. I have no place for men who flaunt their superiority, and strut about in their bow ties, and mix fancy cocktails, and tell me that I am going to Hell.

8.19

Everything exists for some end—a horse, a vine. Why do you wonder? Even the sun will say, I am for some purpose, and the rest of the gods will say the same.

For what purpose then are you—to enjoy pleasure? See if common sense allows this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.19 (tr Long)

As soon as I ask myself, what is it? I must also ask myself, in the same breath, so what is it for?

Purpose is implicit in form. Everything that moves and changes, moves and changes from one state, and into another, and that is inseparable from its very identity. It is coming from somewhere, and going to somewhere. What it is, is itself only complete through what it is made to become.

So I am a creature of flesh and bone, of feelings and instincts, and of reason and choice. To say that alone is not enough. What am I meant to do with those qualities? What sort of life do they point me toward?

I can look at a plant, or an animal, or a tool made by other men, and I can quite clearly discern what they are intended to do. Now let me look at myself. What am I supposed to be?

Some of us will look at a lower aspect alone, at the expense of a higher aspect. We know that we can enjoy pleasure, and so we assume that this is all that there is, all that there could be. We neglect the whole at the expense of the part. Am I a creature of gratification? Of course. Am I a creature only of gratification? Not at all.

As the Philosopher-Emperor says, there is no sense at all in making an animal of a man. A man will feel pleasure or pain, but what distinguishes him from other creatures is his power to know true from false, right from wrong, and thereby to give meaning to his pleasure and pain. He directs what he feels by what he knows.

He understands that how well he feels follows from how well he lives. Pleasure is not the end, but a consequence of the end.

Understanding is greater than utility. Love is greater than contentment. Utility and contentment follow from understanding and love, and never the other way around.

Let me keep my hand on my heart, but let me first and foremost keep my head turned upwards, to an awareness of truth, goodness, and beauty.

8.20

Nature has had regard in everything, no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like the man who throws up a ball.

What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down, or even to have fallen?

And what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst?

 The same may be said of a light also.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.20 (tr Long)

Something of a Stoic version of what goes up, must come down.

We are always quite interested at the start of things, and absorbed by the middle of things, but we may then feel discouraged as they wind down, disappointed after they have all ended.

I notice this in how we treat the ages of our own existence. We celebrate youth, and glorify middle age, when a man can brag of all his greatest achievements, but we awkwardly look the other way at old age, and at death.

Bu why should this have to be so? The good is present within the whole, not merely within this or that part. It isn’t even that the loss of the departure becomes more bearable in contrast to the gain of the arrival, but rather that each and every aspect of things, all stages of change, are expressions of the fullness and harmony within Nature.

It comes into its own specific existence, it increases, it reaches a height, it decreases, and it is transformed into a new existence. There is no beginning of anything new without the end of something old, and so the old is as vital and necessary, and as beautiful, as the new.

New lights are lit all of the time, and old lights go out. The births and deaths of stars are really much like the births and deaths of men, with only the spans of time seeming to make a difference. Speed the cycles up, or slow them down, but their significance remains the same.

So why would I prefer youth to age, or rising to falling, or beginnings to endings? Each must be, and so each is a benefit. There is no story without a start, a middle, and a finish, and there can only be fresh stories when they follow from finished stories.

I try to remember that a completion is as noble and satisfying as an initiation, or that the last step of a journey is just as exciting as the first step of a journey. It’s all there, because it is supposed to be there. I need to give Providence more credit, and see with a broader vision than my immediate passion.

8.21.1

Turn the body inside out, and see what kind of thing it is; and when it has grown old, what kind of thing it becomes, and when it is diseased. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.21 (tr Long)

An unexpectedly pleasant side-effect of trying to think and live like a Stoic has been that I find it more and more difficult to think of anything in Nature as ugly; what strikes me as ugly now is the turning away from Nature.

At the same time, I also increasingly recognize how passing, how fragile, and how unassuming so many things are that we usually treat with such great honor. We look at the human body, for example, and are so full of admiration and praise for its glory and beauty, and we are so caught up in all the image and romance, that we forget it is a weak and disposable shell, no more exciting than a bag of giblets.

We speak so often of how much we want to enjoy the body of another, to have all of our desires satisfied in its possession, consumed with an overwhelming lust. Would it still be so attractive if we were looking at the insides instead of the outsides? Is it suddenly a different body?

We describe eyes, or lips, or cheeks, or any number of the curves of the body with such noble language, but only when they are fresh and young. If the very same things are old, we suddenly say they are “gross”. Remember, however, that “gross” can not only mean undesirable or crude, but also more broadly means anything material. All matter is in a state of dying even as it is living.

We may compare the body of the athlete to the body of the sick man, and we will write poems about the strength and power of one, and turn away in disgust from the decay and stench of the other. Yet each body is really not so different from any other at all, and each body could become like any other before we know it. There is no permanence in either health or disease.

What is genuine here, and what is simply provided by my own delusion, from my own imaginings?

I once thought a girl looked like a perfect goddess, until I saw here vomiting in an alley.

I was once intimidated by the chiseled good looks of a fellow, until I saw him crying over a broken arm.

I once unexpectedly caught an image of myself in a mirror, and without that brief moment to make my countenance seem presentable, I saw how worthless and empty I really looked.

What I am usually calling beautiful or ugly, attractive or disgusting, even strong or weak, isn’t about Nature at all, but about my own confusion concerning what is truly good in life. I am letting my sense of the real be swept aside by shallow appearance.

8.21.2

. . . Short lived are both the praiser and the praised, and the rememberer and the remembered.

And all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree, no, not any one with himself, and the whole earth too is a point.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.21 (tr Long)

Just as I can understand the passing nature of the body, how weak and vulnerable it really is, I can likewise consider all the things in my life that I thought were great, but were really quite small.

I mustn’t look at this as a discouragement, or as some terrible statement of despair, but rather as a reminder to see everything in its proper perspective, to cling to what is truly significant, and to let go of the things that are actually insignificant.

To learn what has nothing stable within it, can in turn lead me to embracing what is the source of all that is stable.

I can look at honor, at being praised and revered, and I can see that there is nothing reliable about it, because it does not come from me. It will come and go with the whims of fashion, the sentiments of others, and the winds of change.

I can look at memory, at the promise of living on forever because people will recall my greatness, and I can see that there is nothing reliable about it, because it has nothing to do with what I may have done. What others remember, or think they remember, is in their own estimation, not in the merit of my actions. And their estimation will soon pass, just as mine will.

Through it all, I look at how tiny and variable every aspect of my supposed world really is, within the context of the whole of existence.

Do I have many friends? Then I also assure you I will have many enemies. Am I greatly loved? Then I also assure you I will be greatly hated.

And when it’s all over, after all has been said and done, only one thing can remain for me. What was within my power, while I was here, regardless of who may or may not have noticed it, or praised it, or despised it, or ignored it? The virtue of what I thought, and the virtue of what I did: that was mine.

And it was never pointless at all, because by being what I was made to be, I did my specific part in the order of what is Universal. No one needs to glorify it, and no one needs to memorialize it; it was good in itself, and for nothing else.

I am hardly nothing, since I am a part of everything, but it is the greatest vanity to make of myself everything. Once I see myself within the whole, and never in conflict with anyone or anything, my need to glorify myself can cease. I am not everything, but in service to everything.

8.22

Attend to the matter which is before you, whether it is an opinion or an act, or a word.

You suffer this justly, for you choose rather to become good tomorrow than to be good today.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.22 (tr Long)

Stoicism challenges our usual sense of balance, and is asking us not to put our weight on all the circumstances around us, but rather to put our weight on our own two feet. The sense of self-reliance can be a bit frightening at first, and once we try to put it into practice, it can be disconcerting to see how radical a transformation and liberation Stoicism really seeks to bring about.

I was first drawn to Stoic thinking not just as a theoretical interest, but also from an urgent need to come to terms with pain and loss. Looking within myself humbly and honestly, I began to see how much of what I thought was important depended entirely on situations beyond my control. It was going to take quite a bit of rebuilding myself to make any of that better.

As I slowly began to see at least some changes in the way my thinking could improve my living, I was in awe at the power that had always been there within me. I had neglected it, of course, because I had reduced most everything to the affection of others, the pursuit of gratification from things outside of me, and demanding to be given instead of choosing to give. If I could bring myself to decide that any condition can be used to live well, then there would really be nothing to stand in the way of my being happy.

To experience that directly, even in the smallest way, can be quite a shock. Whatever may be happening, let me not fight with it, or complain, or hold a grudge; let me instead discover how it gives me an opportunity to act with virtue. Let me attend to it rightly, and though I will hardly master the world, I will have mastered myself.

There can be no half-measures here, so that means that whenever I am still disturbed or distraught, whenever I still dwell on painful feelings instead of making sense of them, the responsibility is my own. I can’t blame the world, because it isn’t the world that is harming me; I am harming myself. There are all sorts of obstacles to my body out there, even as I am the only obstacle to my soul in here.

And this doesn’t require feeling sorry for myself, or beating myself up. It requires not putting the choice off for any longer. If I can choose to be a good man today, I should do so. Then I have fixed the problem, as simply as that.

It only seems difficult or complex when I am flagging in my own commitment. Sometimes I will defer until tomorrow, and at other times I will actually hope that I can defer forever and ever. It isn’t working, since I haven’t yet chosen to make it work.

I deserve exactly what I choose to give myself, not in the breadth of my possessions and honors, but in the depth of my own character.

8.23

Am I doing anything? I do it with reference to the good of mankind.

Does anything happen to me? I receive it and refer it to the gods, and the source of all things, from which all that happens is derived.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.23 (tr Long)

If I am acting, let me act in a way that is right, and serves only what is fair and just. If I am acted upon, let me understand it in a way that is right, and discern how it serves the purpose and order of all things.

There are all sorts of terms, from all sorts of traditions, that we may use to describe the state of a soul that is harmonious. Call it peace, serenity, enlightenment, holiness, or tranquility, but from a Stoic perspective I always see it as the balance between my own deeds and the sum of everything that is done to me.

I can rest in the knowledge that anything I do is within my power to be good, and that anything that happens exists, however mysteriously or indirectly, for the sake of the greatest good.

People are not born into conflict; conflict is something we choose from our own misunderstanding about life.

“Will I catch a fish, and gut it, and cook it, and eat it?” Yes, but there is no conflict there. What I have done, and what has happened to the fish, is a part of Nature.

“Will the lion pounce on me, and kill me, and consume me, and leave what is left for the jackals?” Yes, but there is no conflict there. What the lion has done, and what has happened to me, is a part of Nature.

“But it means that things must die!” Yes, it does. The dying isn’t a problem, because death is never an evil. Living poorly, while I am still alive, is an evil. The fish, or the lion, live by their instincts, and I should live by my reason.

I have had the blessing of knowing people who lived in tranquility, whatever their backgrounds, and whether they lived with the world at their feet or were tossed into the gutter. What they all had in common was an awareness of what is true, good, and beautiful. They found joy both in what they did, and in what happened to them.

I have sometimes been jealous and resentful of tranquil people, but that never had anything to do with them. It has had everything to do with me, and with the disorder within my own soul. How foolish, and how arrogant, it is for me to blame another for being happy, if I have chosen to be miserable.

Happy people aren’t merely happy from the situation they find themselves in; they are happy from the dignity of being themselves within the being of all things.

8.24

Such as bathing appears to you—oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting—so is every part of life and everything.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.24 (tr Long)

Taken out of a proper Stoic context, this sort of statement sounds rather depressing and discouraging. Stoicism is always meant to lift us up, and never to bring us down, but when we allow ourselves to become so accustomed to only negative thoughts, we will assume that pointing out how humble or small something is surely means that it is also useless and pointless.

Every aspect of our time on this world is indeed fragile, subject to corruption, soiled, smeared, and smudged. And yes, I need to remember exactly that very point when I make things seem mighty and glorious that are hardly mighty and glorious at all. My body is frail, my thoughts are fleeting, my feelings can toss me this way and that, and no state of affairs in life is sufficient to be reliable, to offer me any peace of mind.

Yet I may still try to convince myself that my body is so strong, my thinking incapable of error, my passions without any flaw. I may admire the power of my possessions, the purity of my reputation, the grandeur of my place at the table. This is when I must understand that all of it is like straw, that what I think is divine is mundane, that what I perceive as sacred is profane. It isn’t beautiful at all, simply by itself, but rather tarnished and dull, even ugly, at least in the sense that my false estimation is ugly.

It’s not ambrosia and nectar, it’s dirty bathwater.

That doesn’t make my life meaningless, however, not in the least, because it can permit me to redirect my attention. Each and every one of those individual little bits of the world might not be all that much on its own, but what matters is how I can fit myself in together with the pieces, and how all the pieces fit together as a whole.

My part, however fleeting and humble, is to do good in each and every circumstance. Committed to this way of living, I can also know that the good of the whole is what gives significance to all of the parts.

On each and every day, I will find people who are dishonest, selfish, manipulative, or just thoughtless. I will lose things I tell myself I deserve, and gain things I know I don’t deserve. Some things that happen will be frustrating, and others will seem ready to destroy me.

Through all of that, if I keep in mind that all these circumstances don’t mean as much as I’m making of them, I can attend to what is truly decent and worthy. I can know what to live for.

8.25

Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died. Secunda saw Maximus die, and then Secunda died. Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and then Epitynchanus died. Antoninus saw Faustina die, and then Antoninus died.

Such is everything. Celer saw Hadrianus die, and then Celer died. And those sharp-witted men, either seers or men inflated with pride, where are they—for instance the sharp-witted men, Charax and Demetrius the Platonist, and Eudaemon, and any one else like them?

All ephemeral, dead long ago. Some indeed have not been remembered even for a short time, and others have become the heroes of fables, and again others have disappeared even from fables.

Remember this, then, that this little compound, yourself, must either be dissolved, or your poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.25 (tr Long)

I hardly have a decent memory for names and dates, but as a lover of history, and having taught it for a good many years, I usually tend to remember who the players are. And what better players are there, than the ones who populated the soap opera that is Roman history?

So I was a little embarrassed when I first read this passage, because I couldn’t immediately identify all the names that Marcus Aurelius lists. Verus surely refers to Marcus’ co-emperor, Lucius Verus, and Lucilla was Lucius’ wife. I assumed Maximus is Claudius Maximus, one of Marcus’ teachers, but there is apparently some debate about that, and it could apparently refer to a completely different fellow.

I was clueless about Diotimus and Epitynchanus, and while I’m sure Antoninus is Antoninus Pius, Marcus’ father, is the Hadrianus here referring to the former emperor, and is Celer a consul from that period?  Who are Charax, Demetrius, or Eudaemon? I felt like I was asleep for an important class, or skipped over some crucial texts.

But maybe that’s the whole point. Even for a history geek, names come and go, fame rises and falls, and what was once remembered is so quickly forgotten. Ask average Americans how far back they can go naming presidents, and you may be surprised that most can’t even give a list for their own lifetimes.

The last time I was on my old college campus, where I studied and taught for well over a decade, I was deeply saddened, not only because it made me think about painful things from my own past I didn’t want to think about, but also because I saw how quickly everything passes away. You think it will all last forever, but then it’s gone before you blink, and you see a new crowd suffering under the same illusions.

Even my favorite teachers and colleagues who had still stuck around, who had once been as young and vibrant as I had once been, were now slowing down, and were approaching retirement.

I tried to track down an old librarian who had always been so kind to me, and who had worked there for almost her entire adult life, yet no one at the library even recognized her name. I could walk into the cafeteria, or an old classroom, and no one knew me, or greeted me, or paid me any attention whatsoever.

And I find it takes a certain degree of wisdom and fortitude to not only accept this, but to freely embrace it.

I suggest that this is because we are inclined to cling to all the wrong things, and to neglect all the right ones. A broad and healthy perspective on life should reveal that all the coming and going is just the backdrop for something much more important.

What has happened is now gone, and what will happen is completely unknown, but what can be done here and now, in the most humble yet committed way, is where to find happiness and joy.

I think I should worry less about what will come, or dwell on what has already come, and make right what I can make right immediately, with all due haste and urgency.

To whom must I say, “I am sorry?”

To whom must I say, “Thank you?”

To whom must I say, “I love you?”

What should I be doing to practice justice and kindness, before the chance is gone? That can be a good measure of life. I can’t take it with me.

8.26

It is satisfaction to a man to do the proper works of a man.

Now it is a proper work of a man to be benevolent to his own kind, to despise the movements of the senses, to form a just judgment of plausible appearances, and to take a survey of the Nature of the Universe and of the things that happen in it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.26 (tr Long)

I once put this quote on a little chalkboard I had on my office door. For all the years I was a teacher, I would change the quote every week, from Plato to Aquinas, from Augustine to Nietzsche. The response to this one was quite overwhelming, but it wasn’t for the reasons I had hoped for.

See, the word “man” was troublesome for a few folks. By this point in the game of political correctness, I got flack just a few hours after I had written it out. No one came to me directly, of course, but some went straight to the Dean, a few went straight to the President, and one even wrote to the Board of Directors.

I am sadly still of the old school in this regard, and I still think that the word “man” can sometimes mean a male more narrowly, and sometimes mean any human more broadly. I am in no doubt about the sense Marcus Aurelius was using here in this passage.

Read it in context. It is our job as human beings to be kind and just, to not simply be moved by our passions, to think clearly, and to understand who we are in the order of all things. This isn’t simply the responsibility of a male, or of a female, or of this or that race, or of any perceived identity at all. It is the work of being a human being, a rational animal.

If you had four eyes, and eight hands, and happened to be colored purple, but you were still gifted with reason and choice, this would apply to you just as much.

The bitter irony is that we will confidently speak about unity, but we still wallow in our separation. We may tell someone to say or think what he believes is best, unless we happen not to like what someone is saying or thinking.

We say we love, of course, because others are human in theory, but we hate in practice, because others don’t come from the right side of the tracks, or, more importantly, others don’t think like us.

Have it one way, or have it the other way, but you can’t play both sides. Love your neighbor without condition, or feel free to attach all the conditions you like. But don’t tell me there must be universal love, even as you yourself practice a rather particular form of hate.

I know I am not measured by my gender, race, color, height, or weight. I am measured by my virtue. I often fail at that, as do you, and as does anyone. Shall we bicker about the accidents? Move rather to the essence.

Once again, consider what the Philosopher-Emperor actually said, and take that advice to heart. Love others. Don’t be ruled by your emotions. Master your emotions through reason. Think about how all of that fits into the big picture.

For anyone who is still curious, I was given a verbal reprimand from the Dean for my “inappropriate” statement.

The next week, I put this on my little chalkboard:

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

I know, I’m a difficult sort of fellow. I am with Socrates, however, in asking people to think for themselves, even if they sadly find it offensive.

Feel free to hate me, but I still love you.

8.27

There are three relations between you and other things: the one to the body that surrounds you; the second to the Divine cause from which all things come to all; and the third to those who live with you.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.27 (tr Long)

Who and what I am is inseparable from my relationship to what is around me, to the fullness of the world I live in. Yes, I may often feel quite alone, but this is really just because I selfishly decide I am not getting the attention I somehow think I deserve. I am a part of the whole just the same, and I cannot be isolated from the whole.

Even as the recent trend has been to deny that there is anything Divine at all, and therefore that we can hardly have a relationship with what doesn’t exist, we may still be fairly sure that we understand both our own humanity, and the humanity of others. But I suggest that we don’t usually know ourselves, or our neighbors, very well at all, quite possibly since we can’t begin to grasp who we are if we are closed to where we came from.

The part makes absolutely no sense outside of the context of the whole, and will likewise never function separately from the other parts. This is because it is the order and design of the whole that gives meaning to every part.

Wise people usually warned me not to get caught in this or that -ism, or to lose a definition in this or that pigeonhole. Too much of what we think and say is about what we reject as different, instead of what we accept as common, and so I am often wary of missing the forest for the trees.

This is especially true when I am considering questions of self-identity, morality, or divinity. So quick to only make my understanding fit my own preference, I end up not even considering myself properly, let alone considering God, or my neighbor.

It is in such a light, therefore, that I see the three relations Marcus Aurelius speaks of. Many years ago, someone shared a thought with me, that the love of self and the love of neighbor necessarily went together, and that neither could really exist without the other.

Another fellow, who we didn’t even think was still listening to our conversation, immediately chimed in, that neither love of self or of neighbor was possible without the love of God, because you can’t have an effect without the source.

We understood one another, and no doctrinal bickering was required. I should look to the horizontal, to other people around me, and look to the vertical, the Divine above me, if I ever wish to most fully know myself. I will only be comfortable in my own skin when I discover how I fit into the world.

8.28

Pain is either an evil to the body—then let the body say what it thinks of it—or to the soul; but it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility, and not to think that pain is an evil.

 For every judgment and movement and desire and aversion is within, and no evil ascends so high.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.28 (tr Long)

We all feel pain, thought in very different ways, and quite often to very different degrees. I have known others to go through worse suffering than myself, and I have pitied them. I have known others to go through far less suffering than myself, and I have envied them.

Yet whatever the kind, or the degree, it is part of our lives to suffer, to feel pain. This is not itself an evil, because hurt serves a purpose according to Nature. It tells us that something is wrong, and we should do something to make it right.

Now what must be done right?

I will assume that I must confront the cause of the pain, and then master it. That is quite correct, but I am usually looking in all the wrong places for the cause.

Does my body hurt? Yes, find a solution for the pain, if it is at all possible. Sometimes I can do so, and at other times I cannot do so. An illness may or may not have a cure, and I may or may not be able to overpower or evade a torturer.

Does my soul hurt? Yes, find a solution for the pain, but now we are in an entirely different realm. What hurts me on the outside is often beyond my power, but what hurts me on the inside is always, without exception, completely within my power. I may well feel pain, but I am the one who decides what that means to me, and only I will be the one to determine that.

Are you trying to hurt me? You have lied, you have cheated, and you have stolen. I give you credit for being clever, and I shame myself for being foolish. Yes, I feel deeply hurt, sometimes to the point that I feel I would rather die than bear any more of it.

And then I recognize an important thing: the pain matters only in a way that follows from my judgment. Of course it hurts. Now I will either wallow in it, or I will transform it, and I will use it as a means to make myself into someone better.

That’s exclusively my call. It will matter only in the way I allow it to matter. It is up to me whether I am at peace or at war.

Now what must be done right? I must live well for myself, and accept that others will live as they choose. I am the only one big enough to take myself down.

8.29

Wipe out your imaginations by often saying to yourself:

Now it is in my power to let no badness be in this soul, nor desire, nor any perturbation at all; but looking at all things I see what is their nature, and I use each according to its value.

Remember this power that you have from Nature.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.29 (tr Long)

The mind will sometimes become cluttered, or build up a thick residue, the accumulation of too many diversions, a disordered mess of vivid impressions and gripping illusions. Whenever I am beginning to be mastered by my desires and fears more than I am the master of them, it’s time for a good housecleaning.

This hardly needs to be seen as a chore, but can become a profound relief, the lifting of a burden or the clearing of a clouded vision.

What is it that’s getting in the way? All sorts of imaginings, whether dark or alluring, that I am confusing with what is real. I am confronted with a memory, and it may seem too much to bear, or I am grabbed by a passion, and it may appear too strong to resist, or I am worried about what may still come, and it may be telling me that there is no good way out.

This is all quite misleading, because nothing will have power over my own judgment, unless I decide to let it do so. What is so overwhelming about that recollection, or longing, or terror? Something may alter my circumstances, or hinder my body, but my mind has rule over itself, and can determine for itself whether a situation is an obstacle or an opportunity.

The trick behind the housecleaning is actually quite simple, though I will often make it more difficult for myself than it has to be. I can look at what is troubling me, and I can distinguish between what it is within itself, and what it is that I have chosen to make of it. I will usually find that the difference between these two is quite great.

Now I can toss aside what I have imagined, and be left with the reality. It will now not feel so painful, or irresistible, or inevitable. Within Nature, it plays its rightful part, and if I can accept it for what it is, I can come to terms with it. How can I now make this useful for the strength of my own virtue? Each and every state of affairs provides me with that option.

There are all sorts of things well beyond my control, but how I choose to think about something, and therefore to determine what it will mean to me, is not one of those things.

I can remember that whenever I clean the junk out of the old attic, and get rid of the old baggage.

8.30

Speak both in the Senate and to every man, whoever he may be, appropriately, not with any affectation. Use plain discourse.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.30 (tr Long)

Sometimes I am drawn to fancy words because I think that their beauty and grace will help me to discover the truth. But more often than not, I am drawn to fancy words because they allow me to seem clever while also hedging my bets, or to sound really good without really being good at all.

Language is like any tool, capable of being used for right, as much as it can be abused for wrong. Give me reason, and give me speech, and I will find all sorts of ways to be noble or base, divine or brutal. The value of words is only as good as the value of the character behind the words; what I say matters only in relation to what I honestly intend.

Affectation is never honest, because it seeks to impress. It becomes a game, where the players all know they didn’t mean a single thing they said, even as they will proudly insist on their own integrity. It is language for appearance, never for content, and it is expression for the sake of winning approval, never for the sake of doing what is right.

It is hypocrisy, plain and simple. It is sadly the way of the go-getter, who will gladly condemn others as hypocrites, while he is a hypocrite himself. It is lying in the worst sense, not out of panic, fear, or immediate convenience, but out of coldly calculated self-interest.

With the prevalence of all of that, how can I possibly tell the difference between honesty and deceit, whether in others or in myself? Old phrases are as good a test as any:

Put your money where your mouth is. Walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. Actions speak louder than words.

Whenever I prate on about justice, and decency, and respect, whatever I say will only be as powerful as what I do. How often have I seen the self-righteous say one thing, and then do another? That’s a poor measure, however, because that’s all about other people. How often, more properly, have I myself said one thing, and then done another?

Fancy words will only tempt me to be drawn to grandstanding instead of commitment. I can make the package as attractive as I like, but if the content is manure, it still remains manure.

So let me keep the words as simple, direct, and unassuming as they can possibly be. Let me also make the deeds as sincere, committed, and loving as they can possibly be. Whether it looks good should be completely secondary to whether it is good.

8.31

Augustus' court, wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, kinsmen, intimates, friends; Areius, Maecenas, physicians, and sacrificing priests—the whole court is dead.

Then turn to the rest, not considering the death of a single man, but of a whole race, as of the Pompeii; and that which is inscribed on the tombs—the last of his race.

Then consider what trouble those before them have had that they might leave a successor; and then, that of necessity some one must be the last. Again, here consider the death of a whole race.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.31 (tr Long)

Once again, another Stoic reminder of our mortality, the repetition being so necessary because we need to do more than just vaguely and abstractly understand how everything is passing, but we need to see around us, at each and every moment, that what the world considers so noble is really just a foolish vanity.

Only then can the practice live up to the principle of embracing what is truly good in life, acting with virtue for each and every moment.

Once again, I need to be very careful about turning this healthy indifference to fame and glory into a morbid preoccupation with pain and loss, because my Black Dog, who has now been with me for almost two decades, tempts me into seeing only what is bad, where I should be rejoicing in what is good.

Though everything comes around again, each generation has its own special fads and quirks. The veneration of materialist science, which reduces human value only to biology and instinct, has been one of the trends of my time.

I remember the excitement one my friends felt when he discovered the idea that the purpose of human life, and of all life, was just to pass on our genetic codes to our offspring, for the sake of the survival of the species. This helped him rest assured that even if he fell to some predator, or died from a wasting disease, or simply faded away into old age, at least his genes would live on.

I hardly wanted him to feel miserable, but I thought about the fact that not only will each individual pass away, like Augustus and his court, but also, sooner or later, the whole race will pass away. Marcus Aurelius raises the stakes here. One of us will inevitably be the last of our kind. Will that have made all the efforts to survive, from generation to generation, pointless? Will that make the life of that last man worthless?

The whole point is, of course, that it hardly matters how long we are rich, or for what time we are remembered, or for how many years we survive, or for how many generations our descendants survive. None of that is for us to give to ourselves, and it will of necessity be taken away. It is therefore hardly reliable, and offers no real or certain comfort.

Whether Augustus is now alive or dead, or whether his descendants are alive or dead, or whether his fancy mausoleum stands today or will be swallowed up by the earth tomorrow is neither here nor there.

What difference does it make to him now if his name is praised on some monument, or some stones were put together to honor him in death?

Did he live well, with a commitment to character, in the time that he lived, regardless if he was an emperor or a beggar, the founder of a dynasty or the last of his kind? That will be the only thing that can make him, or make anyone, be great.

8.32

It is your duty to order your life well in every single act; and if every act does its duty as far as is possible, be content; and no one is able to hinder you so that each act shall not do its duty.

“But something external will stand in the way!”

Nothing will stand in the way of your acting justly, and soberly, and considerately.

“But perhaps some other active power will be hindered!”

Well, but by acquiescing in the hindrance and by being content to transfer your efforts to that which is allowed, another opportunity of action is immediately put before you, in place of that which was hindered, and one which will adapt itself to this ordering of which we are speaking.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.32 (tr Long)

When I was teaching a junior high school class, I had a student who was quite a handful. I once sat down with him and his mother, and I suggested that just because he felt angry or offended by something, didn’t mean he needed to lash out, to insult others, or to push them around.

“Maybe if someone has treated you poorly, you could teach him a lesson, not by punching him in the mouth, but by treating him well?”

The young fellow grew red in the face. “What the f@#k does that mean?”

The mother was a bit more civilized about it, and scolded him for his foul language, but said something much the same. “How can you expect him to control how he feels?”

I could hardly hope that the kids would bother to think, when the adults who told me what to do would also not bother to think.

I suspect I knew right there and then that I was never going to find any real acceptance as a teacher. It was only going to be a matter of time before I would end up on the chopping block, for boldly suggesting that the act of suffering what was wrong was never an excuse for doing what was wrong.

I struggle with this challenge as much as any fellow. I may use my environment as an excuse to behave poorly, and I may say that I had to do it, or that I was given no other choice, or that I was made to act as I did. One of my favorite pathetic phrases is “I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

And even as I say it, I know that I am deceiving myself. I don’t have to do anything, I am always given a choice, and no one else makes me act in any way at all. If it is the right thing to do, I should proceed without hesitation. If it is the wrong thing to do, I should stop immediately. That is hardly difficult, even as I make it difficult for myself, because I wish to dodge my own responsibility.

There is no obstacle to living a good life, not a single one, except my own judgment. There is no reason at all for me not to love, or to accept, or to show sympathy, except my own judgment. I am a creature of reason, and therefore of free will. I order my own actions.

If someone stands in the way of my action, he may well alter the external consequence, but he has not in any way altered my internal disposition.

If someone takes away my very power to act upon what is outside of me, he may well hinder the effect, but he has in no way hindered the righteousness of the cause.

Yes, if I offer you the hand of friendship, you may cut off my hand. Yet I have still chosen to offer friendship. Yes, if I give you my heart, you may well break it. Yet I have still chosen to give you my heart.

As long as I have life and awareness, I am my own master. Take away my life and awareness, and you have killed me, but even how I face that very loss, at that last moment, is still within my power.

I once said something similar to my daughter, when she was only at the tender age of nine, while we she sat with me in our yard.

“So bad guys never really win?” she asked curiously.

I puffed at my pipe for a moment to get my answer right. The smoking of a pipe offers that wonderful benefit of reflection. “Maybe on their terms, but never on your terms.”

I hope she will get that. It took me most of my life to get that.

8.33

Receive wealth without arrogance, and be ready to let it go.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.33 (tr Long)

I will regularly get flak for encouraging Stoic thinking, sometimes because I’m not explaining it properly, but at other times because people choose to misunderstand it. I no longer know how many times, for example, I’ve been told that Stoicism is cold and emotionless, or that Stoicism denies pleasure, or that Stoicism simply means not caring.

I can only remind myself that Stoicism has allowed me the greatest pleasures, and helped me to embrace my emotions, and demanded of me that I care for others as deeply as I care for myself.

Another one of these misconceptions is that Stoics despise wealth, or renounce possessions, or condemn worldly prosperity. Not at all. The sincere Stoic, at least of the traditional variety, is instead indifferent to these things, because they are not the measure of a good life. He neither desires them for their own sake, nor rejects them for their own sake. To be indifferent to something in the Stoic sense is not to consider it worthy or unworthy in itself, but to find worth either in its presence or its absence.

I squirm a bit when I see hipster Stoics use indifference as a way to be dismissive, and then I must correct myself by fixing my squirming instead of trying to fix anyone else.

A man is not better or worse because he is rich or poor; his character will shine through under either condition.

Has Fortune given me opulence and luxury? Yes, I will take it, and I may even prefer it or not prefer it, but I will not allow it to define me. It is an occasion, like any other, to practice the art of living well.

Has Fortune given me simplicity and poverty? Yes, I will take it, and I may even prefer it or not prefer it, but I will not allow it to define me. It is an occasion, like any other, to practice the art of living well.

I have known poor men who want to be rich, and rich men who want to be poor, even as every good man I’ve ever known will be content with either condition. Yes, this is foolishness to the man who merely lusts for himself. It is also wisdom to the man who truly loves himself.

If something comes my way, I should accept it with humility. When something is taken away, I should continue as if nothing was different, with no resentment or demands. What I have is not who I am. Who I am should make noble use of anything I have, as much as of anything I do not have.

8.34

If you have ever seen a hand cut off, or a foot, or a head, lying anywhere apart from the rest of the body, such does a man make himself, as far as he can, who is not content with what happens, and separates himself from others, or does anything unsocial.

Suppose that you have detached yourself from the Natural Unity—for you were made by Nature a part, but now you have cut yourself off—yet here there is this beautiful provision, that it is in your power again to unite yourself.

God has allowed this to no other part, after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the kindness by which He has distinguished man, for He has put it in his power not to be separated at all from the Universal. And when he has been separated, He has allowed him to return, and to be united, and to resume his place as a part.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.34 (tr Long)

Over the years, what I have perceived as being the greatest pain, and what has fed the Black Dog more than anything else, is my feeling that I have been separated from others. This could take the form of being put down, ridiculed, or deceived by people, but mostly I felt hurt by being shunned and ignored when I was no longer thought of as being useful or convenient. Seeing myself abandoned by someone else, I would assume I was somehow cut off from sharing in being human.

My mistake was always the same. I believed that my fellows could exile me from living well, when in fact their actions only divided them from humanity, and never actually did anything to isolate me.

Even if they chose to walk away, I could choose to stay right where I was. Even if they chose to hate, I could still choose to love. Even if they chose to reject, I could still choose to embrace. Only I can decide whether or not I will play my part within the whole.

When Marcus Aurelius speaks of man as a being by nature social, I never understand this in the shallow sense of seeking to be liked, or winning affection, or playing for status in some clever game. I understand it rather in the sense that as a rational creature, I can freely choose to pursue what is good, and to consciously share this with every other rational creature.

We are only completely ourselves in cooperation with one another. Another may remove himself from this harmony, but that absence should encourage me in my place all the more.

And whenever I have been so foolish as to cut myself off from the human whole, my reason and choice can always still allow me to rejoin the human whole. What has been broken can still be made right, since only my judgment needs to be altered to restore my own contribution to the balance.

While I still live, I can still return to the fold. I have today, but not necessarily tomorrow, so let me do this while I can.

I was sometimes confused by the urgency with which people working the Twelve Steps would commit themselves to the Ninth Step, making amends to others. I came to understand that a good part of this dedication followed from recognizing our responsibility to rejoin the human family.

No one ever really casts me out, even as I cast myself out when I reject my seat at the table. I am no more complete than a severed limb when I allow myself to become detached from the rest of humanity, and I should be grateful that no miracle of modern medicine is necessary for me to reattach myself.

8.35

As the Nature of the Universal has given to every rational being all the other powers that it has, so we have received from it this power also.

For as the Universal Nature converts and fixes in its predestined place everything which stands in the way and opposes it, and makes such things a part of itself, so also the rational animal is able to make every hindrance its own material, and to use it for such purposes as it may have designed.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.35 (tr Long)

“You are nothing else but God made small.”

I was told this once, and immediately reared back in surprise. How could someone tell me that I am anything like God? I am imperfect, while God is perfect. I live subject to time, while God is timeless. I am finite, while God is infinite. There is a limit to my knowledge and power, while the knowledge and power of God are limitless. I am a creature, while God is the Creator.

Yet for all of those unfathomable divisions, we still share something so essential in common. I should not have felt so shocked. My being is certainly only a particular extension of God’s universal being, even as my being also participates in something truly wonderful with the Divine. I am given the gift of reason, and I am thereby given the gift of conscious choice.

I should never make myself bigger than I am, and I should also never make myself smaller than I am. In the Old Testament mold, I am in His image and likeness.

Other things move and are moved without awareness, while those things with reason can understand their own actions, and thereby act for themselves.

They are not merely acted upon by circumstances, but are able to make use of their circumstances.

They are not merely ordered by purpose and design, but form their own purpose and design.

They are not merely subject to Providence, but freely cooperate with it.

In raising children, for all of my missteps and blunders, I quickly learned that it is crucial to keep their attention focused. As they grow older and increasingly self-aware, this becomes about more than just keeping them occupied, and transforms into helping them find a sense of meaning in what they do.

When they do something to tidy the house, or prepare dinner, or work in the garden, children may not be doing the best job, and I might be tempted to just do it for them. This defeats the purpose, however, of helping them understand what they should do, and why they should choose to do it. When my little son and daughter would say they were “helping” by handing me my tools while I tried to fix the sink, this was their way of knowing they were playing their part.

Now the parallel of Creator and creature to parent and child is hardly perfect, but there is something helpful for me here. I was slowly taught to walk, to talk, to read, to write, and ultimately, and most importantly, to think and therefore to act on my own. In growing up, I moved from being ruled to learning to rule myself. This is, in a sense, the expression of the Divine spark. It is the gift I am given of sharing in knowledge and freedom.

I am not just made, but I myself become a maker.

8.36

Do not disturb yourself by thinking of the whole of your life. Let not your thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles that you may expect to befall you.

But on every occasion ask yourself, what is there in this that is intolerable and past bearing? For you will be ashamed to confess.

In the next place remember that neither the future nor the past pains you, but only the present.

But this is reduced to a very little, if you only circumscribe it, and chide your mind if it is unable to hold out against even this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.36 (tr Long)

At any given moment, it can seem that the weight of life becomes unbearable. Memories of the past can haunt us, the pain of the present can seem overwhelming, and concern for the future can fill us with anxiety. I may feel swept away, as if everything is beyond my control, and it is such a sense of helplessness that feeds into the despair of hopelessness.

What we like to think of as a distinctly modern problem, a sort of existential dread, is hardly anything new. Its root, I suggest, is not about the state of world around us at all, but rather about the focus of the thinking within us. Our concern follows from our own judgments, where we choose to give force to things that need not have any power over us at all.

When I am faced with such a burden at any given moment, a helpful exercise is to attend only to that very moment, and to nothing else. What is it that I am confronting right here and now, and what is it that I can do in order to remedy my worry right here and now? Once I have stripped away all my own imaginings, I am left with something quite manageable.

I should not gawk at the full scope of all the things I believe are bringing me down. I should stick to what is immediately at hand, pushing aside the many diversions of my own creation.

The things from my past are no more, and only my own estimation is still allowing them to have any effect upon me. They are long gone, while it is just my own thinking that is giving them substance.

The things in my future are not yet, and only my fretting over possibilities is gnawing at me. They are not yet, while it is just my own thinking that is giving them substance.

The things right now are certainly in front of me, but are they really as imposing as I make them out to be? If I am completely honest with myself, how are they so insurmountable? It is not the situation in itself that threatens me, but only my fear, my longing, my confusion, my insecurity, my nervousness. Those are all from me, and I can put them in their place.

Does my circumstance, however big or small, still allow me the choice to act with virtue, to practice justice, to show compassion, to still do right by myself in the face of something wrong? I must admit that it invariably does. I am the biggest obstacle to that.

Once I know how much of what is unnecessary I have added to the mix, how much baggage I don’t need to be carrying, what seemed so big is actually quite small. It doesn’t take superhuman strength or any brute willpower. The courage to change myself comes only from the simplicity of knowing that only I can harm myself.

I made the dread and horror, so I can also unmake it.

8.37

Do Panthea or Fergamus now sit by the tomb of Verus? Do Chaurias or Diotimus sit by the tomb of Hadrianus? That would be ridiculous.

Well, suppose they did sit there, would the dead be conscious of it? And if the dead were conscious, would they be pleased? And if they were pleased, would that make them immortal?

Was it not in the order of destiny that these persons too should first become old women and old men and then die? What then would those do after these were dead?

All this is foul smell and blood in a bag.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.37 (tr Long)

I saw much of death and dying when I was young, and I was often puzzled by the way we try to venerate those who have passed away. I was not so cynical as to assume any sinister motives, but I did wonder why we so often pay more attention to people when they are dead than when they were alive. Was the benefit intended for them, or was it a way to assist ourselves with the acceptance of loss?

At times it would even make me angry. I felt resentful when dozens of people attended my great-grandmother’s funeral, even as she had sat alone so many times in the last years of her life. I had to temper my frustration when many hundreds praised a departed friend, even as she had taken her own life because she felt so lonely.

My anger was hardly justified, of course, and it said more about my own weakness than that of others. Yet when my head was calmer I still asked myself if honoring the departed was a way that we managed our own anxiety about death, and memorializing them was a way to try and sidestep our inevitable mortality.

Marcus Aurelius asks an uncomfortable but necessary question. Do the dead gain any comfort from all our efforts? Does it make them happy to be remembered? Can our devotion make them immortal? If they somehow require this, what will happen after we too are gone?

The Stoics like to remind us that death is not an evil, but a necessary part of Nature. I should not attempt to make something right that isn’t wrong to begin with, and so I am best served by living well instead of trying to conquer dying. Let me certainly feel sadness for a loss, while also understanding that living forever as we are now is not something we are made to do.

In my own thinking, all of this reminds me to show my love for others while they are here, and not wait until they are gone.

A few years back, I sat down with a fellow who had done much to help me make it through some tough times, and had become something of an informal counselor to me. He apologized that he had been unable to be around more often, but explained that his health made it very difficult for him. I pestered him to tell me more, and he quite calmly said that he was dying of cancer, and that doctors given him another month or two.

I expressed my deep sadness and regret to him, but he suggested that none of that was necessary. He added that he didn’t want an obituary, or a wake, or a funeral, or any sort of gravesite.

“After my life is lived, I don’t want anyone dwelling on it. It’ll hardly matter then!” He gave off a hearty chuckle.

So I try to remember him as I hope he would have wanted, not with a sense of grief, but in ways that can now help me to live well through his example. I was certain to later make the exact same request of my own family, and I was grateful that they understood completely. I try to remember that I can’t take it with me, and that there is no need to try and change anything after the fact.

8.38

If you can see precisely, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.38 (tr Long)

When I look within myself, I shamefully recognize that I have far too often failed at sound thinking, and so I have accordingly also failed at good living. These two must go together, for without clarity of understanding there can be no right purpose in action.

My thinking doesn’t have to involve rocket science, or profound metaphysics, or proceed from any sort of fancy education. It has nothing to do with how smart or gifted I am, but with how thoughtful and careful I am. It’s something like the difference between being intelligent, which I could take or leave, and being considerate, which I can’t live without.

I remain convinced there are really just two things any of us need to have a firm grasp on in order to be happy, and they are hardly concerned with secrets revealed only to the privileged and the elect. First, what is my nature as a human being? Second, what must I be doing in order to fulfill that nature?

Everything, absolutely everything from the most life-changing decisions to the smallest gesture or comment, hinges on how we are going to answer these questions. If my vision is clouded, or my decisions are lazy and careless, I’m going to make quite the mess of it. Trust me, I speak from personal experience.

Who am I? I am a creature of many aspects, one that grows, eats, sleeps, moves, senses, has desires and instincts, and feels pleasure and pain. But most of all, behind all of that, I am a creature capable of knowledge, reflection, and choice. It is the ruling part that gives meaning to the parts that are ruled.

How should I live? To act according to that nature, I must know that my own actions should encourage my own excellence, and the excellence of others, and the excellence of all things, all in their own way. As a being of intellect it is only my wisdom that will make it possible for me to be brave, temperate, and just.

If I am made to know the truth and love the good, let me commit to that. All the rest is quite secondary. I need only ask myself what is within my power to give, and not try to control what I may or may not receive.

Yet in the face of this call to clarity, which is really rather simple and asks for no trimmings or accessories, I can become quite mentally myopic. I choose to look no further than my own passion, and I allow my judgment to surrender to selfish longing. I become a sort of philosophical and moral Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?”

Lazy looking, sloppy thinking, and poor choices come not from stupidity, however, but from thoughtlessness. I have always seen a difference between these two. I should never look down on someone who can’t do something, but I should be quite wary of someone who won’t do something.

8.39

In the constitution of the rational animal, I see no virtue that is opposed to justice; but I see a virtue that is opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance.

, —Marcus AureliusMeditations, Book 8.39 (tr Long)

I’m not certain if Marcus Aurelius directly intends a dig at the Epicureans here, those Ancients who defined pleasure as the highest good, but I do know that I can relate to his point immediately.

I have never gone wrong by caring for the dignity of another, while I have very often gone wrong by only wanting to be satisfied. Instead of being good, I merely wanted to feel good. The difference is not a play on words; it reflects one of the most fundamental choices I must make.

This fellow is dragging me down, and he is cramping my style. This girl asks for too much, and is interfering with my plan of life. All these folks, here and there, are just getting in the way of my gratification. So I will dispose of them, because my sense of justice only goes as far as my convenience.

That makes me a grasping man, unwilling to temper my passions, and as a consequence it makes me a user and abuser of others. Even as I decide not to rule myself, I am happy to rule my fellows, and I think it right to cast aside the very people I am called to love.

Make me the king over my neighbor, I demand, instead of his servant, oblivious to the fact that I have made myself a slave to my lust, instead of its master.

Decency and respect for others never have any conditions attached to them in order to be good, even as wants and passions must always be conditioned by the measure of virtue. Justice never needs to be tempered, while longing must constantly be tempered.

I am learning that ordering my greed is not a burden. It is a liberation. Once I can think for myself, I am no longer chained to feelings alone, and I can also show reverence to others, simply for their own sake.

This extends to letting go of resentment when others don’t treat me fairly. I should practice fairness at all costs, with no requirement beyond that in return.

It doesn’t have to just be about me, and what I want. It can be about us, and what we all need.

8.40

If you take away your opinion about that which appears to give you pain, you yourself stand in perfect security.

“Who is this self?”

The reason.

“But I am not reason.”

Be it so. Let then the reason itself not trouble itself. But if any other part of you suffers, let it have its own opinion about itself.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.40 (tr Long)

When I wake in the morning, I will often feel intense emotional pain. I open my eyes, and I immediately feel flooded by a deep sense of loss. I do not choose the pain as it comes over me.

When I wake in the morning, I will also often feel intense physical pain. I open my eyes, and I am immediately grabbed by sharp stabbing in my chest. I do not choose that pain either as it comes over me.

If I did not have recourse to my own Stoic attitude, I am fairly certain either one of these circumstances alone would take me down. Both together would be completely unbearable. Yet as it stands, even if I cannot make the pain disappear in either my emotions or my body, I can choose what I am going to make of it in my thinking.

This ability not only allows me to live, but also, more often than not, for my life to be something more than clinging to the edge. The best way for me to describe it is learning to put pain in its place. This means not allowing it to take over, but it also means not being so foolish as to pretend it doesn’t exist. By all means, let pain act upon all the parts of me that are not reason, but at the same time let the part that is reason, the ruling part, understand that nothing must impose upon it if I do not permit it to do so.

The power of judgment is such that I can decide what anything means to me, and so I can determine how deeply I will allow myself to be affected by this or that feeling. I don’t think of this as a denial, but more as a sort of bracketing. I can have a healthy respect, knowing what something can do to my flesh and emotions, but I also can know I do not have to let it go any further than that.

In the simplest of terms, a pain within the body does not need to become a despair within the mind. The mind, through its distinct nature, can rise above this.

I would be a fool to say that I am just the sum of my emotions, and it is sadly that sort of approach that would allow me to go under whenever something hurts. Yet I would also be a fool to say that I am just a mind, denying the reality of all my other aspects. Accept each for what it is, but do not allow one to intrude upon the proper place of the other.

The power of the mind to have its judgment of “yes” or “no” to be absolute over itself is quite an amazing thing. It doesn’t proceed from brute strength, or extraordinary willpower, or violent conflict, but rather from just knowing that there is something within me that is always completely invulnerable to anything out there. Because mind rules itself, it rules what it permits into itself.

The pain may be there, but it does not have to be here. I will sometimes repeat a silly little phrase to myself, that a broken heart, whether literally or figuratively, doesn’t need to also be a broken head.

8.41

Hindrance to the perceptions of sense is an evil to the animal nature. Hindrance to the movements of the desires is equally an evil to the animal nature. And something else also is equally an impediment and an evil to the constitution of plants.

So then that which is a hindrance to the intelligence is an evil to the intelligent nature. Apply all these things then to yourself. Does pain or sensuous pleasure affect you? The senses will look to that.

Has any obstacle opposed you in your efforts towards an object? If indeed you were making this effort absolutely, unconditionally, or without any reservation, certainly this obstacle is an evil to you considered as a rational animal.

But if you take into consideration the usual course of things, you have not yet been injured, nor even impeded. The things, however, that are proper to the understanding no other man is able to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way.

When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.41 (tr Long)

I understand and accept that Stoic thinking and living are hardly going to be all that popular. I’m not so arrogant as to think that this is because most people can’t do it, since if even I can get a start at it then anyone can, but rather because most people simply don’t want to do it. Our habits will tell us that everything worthwhile in life is to be found outside of us. We are accustomed to thinking that what we possess makes us better and happier, whether it be money, or pleasure, or reputation, and so we define ourselves by everything except ourselves.

The whole model of Stoicism can come across as quite ridiculous to our common sensibilities, especially when a Stoic says something as preposterous as “You cannot defeat me.”

“ Of course I can defeat you! I can block your way. I can take your property. I can ruin your name. I can lock you up. I can even kill you.”

Yes, perhaps those things are sometimes within your power to control, but you will find that they are outside of your grasp as often as they are within it. Your fortune will change as quickly, and as easily, as mine.

Most importantly, however, you will also find that one thing always remains beyond your power. Whatever circumstance you put me in, my judgment remains my own. Alter the state of my body, of my senses, of my feelings, but only I can choose to alter the state of my thinking.

If I only so decide, your efforts will be in vain, and you are only giving me the chance to develop a better soul, while you do harm to your own soul. Here, let us instead become better together.

The senses can be hindered, and the desires can be denied, and the body can be chained, but the mind remains free.

Does this mean that the mind has absolute power to do whatever it wills? Of course not. It may not have the power to make the body immortal, or turn lead into gold, or charm someone into undying love. Just because something can be dreamed, does not necessarily mean it can be achieved.

What does, however, always remain within the sphere of the mind is the mastery over itself. I remind myself that this is always my own, even as situations come and go around me. Even how long I will live is not for me to decide, but how well I live while I live is entirely my own business.

The sphere need never give way, or surrender the dignity that is enclosed within it.

8.42

It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.42 (tr Long)

This passage gave me some trouble when I first read it, because I was assuming it was obvious that I shouldn’t give myself pain, and I was also assuming it seemed rather silly to claim that one has never chosen to give pain to others. I was misunderstanding what it means to cause pain, and the reasons why I might end up causing it.

After all, I always seemed to be making the mistake of taking too much care of myself, and not caring enough for others, and I could think of all sorts of instances where I was trying to maximize my own pleasure as well as seeking to hurt my fellows. But then I realized that I quite often end up hurting myself even as I intend to help myself, and whenever I am doing something bad to another, my thinking is still somehow, in however perverse a way, aimed at doing some sort of good.

I end up doing harm to myself and to others, even as I am intending to be of benefit. I do bad because I am ignorant of the good. My ignorance, whether willful or not, is the root cause of my vice, by twisting and distorting my sense of what is right. As odd as it seems, my clouded thinking will perceive pain as pleasure, or insist that hurting is helping.

The remedy is in choosing to see my thoughts and deeds for what they really are, and recognizing how misguided I can truly be when I confuse a vice for a virtue.

And even though I might not completely understand what I’m doing, I manage to hurt myself all the time. In fact, when I do wrong I’m actually hurting myself the most, because while I might injure the goods of the body of another, I am a doing even worse by injuring the goods of my own soul.

I notice how delusional I become, telling myself over and over that something is making me better, when it is only making me worse. If it’s really so great, why am I just as miserable as I was before? Lust, and laziness, and deception, and anger may appear quite satisfying, but they are simply self-destructive. I may be calling it love and pride, but I am only filled with hatred and shame.

“Don’t hurt yourself” sounds like silly advice, but it is one of the most necessary pieces of wisdom I need to hear, because I don’t really even know how much I’m hurting myself at all. I need to take off that blindfold of ignorance. I can only take care of myself when I understand what it really means to care.

8.43

Different things delight different people; it is my delight to keep the ruling faculty sound without turning away either from any man or from any of the things that happen to men, but looking at and receiving all with welcome eyes and using everything according to its value.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.43 (tr Long)

I’m always one for being committed to what is true and good, and I am at the same time quite wary of any sort of intellectual bullying. After all, I can hardly say that I want other people to think for themselves, while simultaneously telling them exactly what they must think. The truth should set you free, not make you my slave.

People will seek joy in all sorts of ways. If they have come to know a better life, let me be happy for them. If they have fallen into a worse life, let me suggest improvement to them, not by dictating, but by the worth of my own example. Whatever I say about happiness is meaningless if I myself am not living in happiness.  Put your own house in order! Physician, heal yourself!

So much of what we believe will satisfy us seems to be built on the assumption of conflict. I may think I need to always be fighting with myself, and to always be fighting with other people. Now I will see that around me each and every day, and yet I don’t see people finding any delight in this; they seem to be in a state of constant anxiety.

Will it help if I tell them how wrong they are, offering only another source of opposition and strife? Or could I simply live in the way I find most delightful, hoping they can see its merit for their own lives, while also being quite content if they completely ignore me?

I don’t need to be at war with myself. There is serenity within me when I choose to let reason rule, when the inferior is ordered by the superior, the lesser measured according to the greater. This means that I can only act for the good if I first understand what is good, and the reasons why it is good. In this way, all circumstances and all feelings can be of service to me, because I can know how they can be directed to living well.

I don’t need to be at war with others. If I can choose to rule myself, I can also respect the manner in which others choose to rule themselves. Whether I believe they are right or wrong, whatever they think and whatever they do only offers me a greater opportunity to practice virtue for myself. They have their place in the balance of all things, just as much as I have my place.

I try to remember that a wise man, who surely will also be a loving man, and therefore also a deeply contented man, will accept things as they are instead of casting them aside, and will seek to find the good in things instead of dwelling upon the evil. That is the sort of delight and serenity I’m seeking, where even a cloudy or stormy day is a profoundly beautiful day.

8.44

See that you secure this present time to yourself; for those who rather pursue posthumous fame do not consider that the men of after time will be exactly such as these whom they cannot bear now, and both are mortal.

And what is it in any way to you if these men of after time utter this or that sound, or have this or that opinion about you?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.44 (tr Long)

I have always loved wandering through towns all over the world, not following some guidebook that tells me where all the important sites are, but rather finding the obscure corners, those wonderful places off the beaten path that show human life for what it really is, in all of both its wonder and its grime.

On those journeys I have stumbled across overgrown thickets that were once pristine parks, crumbling buildings that were once mansions, and, perhaps the ones that move me the most, statues and monuments erected to immortalize people now long forgotten. Pull back the ivy, rub away the dirt from the inscription, and you uncover snapshots of past worlds.

Some people suggest that this would make them quite sad, and that my odd hobby might even be rather pathetic, but I am not driven by melancholy or a romantic yearning for the past. I am rather inspired by learning how the human condition is so much the same at all times, even as each individual expression of human life is only for a very brief time.

I suppose there can be a certain sense of power, of immortality, in wanting to be remembered. We become so accustomed to this goal of extending the mark of our existence as long as possible, and so we think it tragic when such efforts fail. But there need be no loss or sadness here, because the dignity of human life is never measured by what other people think or say, and it is never measured by what may or may not happen after a span of life has passed.

The dignity of living is the living itself, and Nature has given this a proper limit. There is a perfectly good reason the Stoic is not afraid of death, or cares nothing for fame, or is unimpressed by fancy posturing. He understands that each moment can be a perfect and complete present, the fullness of life. The weight of the past and the worry for the future do not need to define it.

“But it is gone!” Yes, it is gone. And look how glorious it was! It needs no encore beyond what it was, when it was.

“But I won’t matter anymore!” Yes, of course you will still matter, but not perhaps in the way that you expect. Whether or not there is any further recognition has nothing at all to do with your significance and worth in the order of things.

Am I living well right now, the only thing within my power? The rest is just a diversion.

8.45

Take me and cast me where you wish; for there I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper constitution.

Is this change of place sufficient reason why my soul should be unhappy and worse than it was, depressed, expanded, shrinking, frightened? And what will you find which is sufficient reason for this?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.45 (tr Long)

During what I call my Wilderness Years, where I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by loneliness and despair, I made a number of frantic efforts to keep myself afloat. At one point, I dropped all my academic pretensions, and sought out work that might better serve my soul.

I stumbled across a chance to work in Catholic social services, and I jumped at it. Asked which particular ministries interested me, I immediately chose AIDS patients and prisoners. At that time, those who suffered from AIDS were largely considered pariahs, just as those doing jail time still are to this day.

I somehow figured, quite selfishly perhaps, that if I could work around that sort of suffering, where others will barely consider you to be human, it might help me to come to terms with my own suffering.

What I did not expect was the degree to which the experience would affect me, and how it continued changing me for years afterwards. I was forcefully pulled out of all my first-world problems, and shown the bare bones of how other people face real pain.

I slowly observed that people weren’t made or broken by suffering, but rather that they made or broke themselves through suffering. It wasn’t what happened to them, but what they chose to do with what happened to them.

I hardly think I ever helped anyone else, because I was really just a gofer, but many of those people helped me. It was in hospitals and prisons that I saw both some of the best and the worst in people; it was the judgment about circumstances that made the difference.

The words of Viktor Frankl, which had only been a profound abstraction before, were now strikingly real:

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.

It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.

Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Wherever you may put me, and under whatever conditions I must live, am I not still capable of living with dignity and character? Yes, the outside may be chipped away, but the inside can still flourish; in fact it can flourish all the more, because greater hardship can actually offer an opportunity for greater virtue.

If I can rightly understand what it is that gives my life meaning and value, the excellence of my own attitude, I can recognize that I do not need to consider any state of affairs to be too much to handle. The weight of circumstances and the power of pain only have as much power as I permit them to have.

Do you choose to treat me like an animal? You have made that choice. Now whether I choose to also become like an animal, or thrive as a human being, is entirely my own choice.

8.46

Nothing can happen to any man that is not a human accident, nor to an ox that is not according to the nature of an ox, nor to a vine that is not according to the nature of a vine, nor to a stone that is not proper to a stone.

If then there happens to each thing both what is usual and natural, why should you complain? For the Common Nature brings nothing which may not be borne by you.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.46 (tr Long)

We will speak of nature in many ways, and we appeal to many aspects of the natural. We may say that nature is a harmony or a balance, that which is pure and pristine, free from impediment, the way the world works before any artificiality steps in, the true direction everything has deep down to the core.

Many of the Ancients saw nature as the guiding source of all action, the very expression of something’s essence. I have long thought that Aristotle’s definition makes up in precision for what some may say it lacks in poetry: “nature is a principle or cause of being moved and of being at rest, in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not through another.”

It is accordingly proper that something behave according to its identity, that what it does reflects what it is. A stone, a river, a vine, an ox, or a man exist in harmony with their own natures, and the underlying Nature of all things, when they fulfill their innate purpose. In the simplest sense, the stone acts solidly, the river acts fluidly, the vine acts with nutrition, growth, and reproduction, the ox further acts with sensation, the man acts even further with reason and choice.  

I appreciate how Marcus Aurelius here highlights another piece to the whole order of Nature. Not only will things act according to their particular natures, in agreement with what they are, but they will also be acted upon according to their particular natures, in agreement with what they are. In other words, what a stone, a river, a vine, an ox, or a man do as well as what happens to them will always work together.

I might think it is somehow unnatural for a stone to be broken, or for a river to dry up, or for a vine to be cut, or for an ox to be yoked, or for a man to suffer. Surely such circumstances will hinder each of these things from being what they are intended to be? Not at all, because the conditions they must face are a very part of what they are, and their responses are only possible through such a process of change.

Let me look at myself. I may understand that, as a creature of mind and will, I am here to know the truth and love the good. But the loss of fortune, of pleasure, of fame, of wealth, or of health seems to be standing in the way of my living well, and so I might claim that pain, disgrace, poverty, or sickness are unnatural to me.

Yet those conditions can be perfectly natural to me, since I can still always make use of them to live with wisdom and virtue, just as the vine can be natural if it is pruned, or the ox if it is put to work in a field. What happens to me is never unnatural, even as how I use my free choice to react to what happens could well be unnatural.

Yes, it is even natural for things to cease to be, just as it is natural for an animal to both eat and be eaten, because it is natural for something new to grow out of something old.

It is the order of Providence, the unity of all things that Marcus Aurelius here calls the Common Nature, that makes this possible. Nothing happens without purpose, for good can always arise from any situation.

I should therefore work with my own nature, and never against it, by embracing every event as something I am made not merely to endure, but also to transform. My complaints reflect poorly on what I do, not upon what is done to me.

8.47

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now.

But if anything in your own disposition gives you pain, who hinders you from correcting your opinion? And even if you are pained because you are not doing some particular thing that seems to you to be right, why do you not rather act than complain?

“But some insuperable obstacle is in the way!”

Do not be grieved then, for the cause of its not being done depends not on you.

“But it is not worthwhile to live, if this cannot be done!”

Take your departure then from life contentedly, just as one who dies in full activity, and well pleased too with the things that are obstacles.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.47 (tr Long)

The Stoic claim that it is within our power to modify our feelings by modifying our judgments may seem quite absurd, especially when we are so accustomed to defining ourselves as creatures dominated by passion. But we need not appeal only to some noble theory here, as the proof is in the pudding. I must only observe that the degree of how much I choose to value something in my thinking will determine the degree to which I am affected by a feeling.

If I don’t like cake, I won’t be angered when someone takes the last slice. If I’m into bird watching, I will get quite excited when I spot an ivory-billed woodpecker.

I once knew a fellow who was hopelessly enamored of a girl we knew. He would do anything he could to win her attention, and tried again and again to make her jealous by flirting with other women. The object of his affections wouldn’t bite, however, and the reason was quite clear to all of us, thought it was hardly clear to him: what he thought and did were not all that important in her estimation, and so she hardly felt jealous about someone she didn’t consider seriously. How she felt about him was in direct proportion to what she thought about him.

I will only feel loss for something I think is valuable to me, and I will only feel desire for something I think I need. Alter the judgment about what I believe to be worth possessing, and I will alter the power of my want.

Now I never think of this as being something as simple as turning feelings on and off, but rather a matter of directing or giving meaning and purpose to how I feel. Both the mind and the emotions can be complex, subtle, and mysterious, and it will take focus and care to understand their ways.

A pain in my body, arising from injury or disease, or a pleasure in my passions, arising from my deepest instincts, may not be in my power to somehow stop and start. But it is within my power to understand them, to put them in their place, to control my reactions to them. I often think of this as the art of tempering how I feel.

It will indeed often seem like something is blocking my way from contentment and serenity, but I must simply ask myself if what I am doing, or what I am leaving undone, is itself the obstacle. If so, I am more than able to remove it by my own decision. If not, I should not allow what I cannot determine to trouble me.

Is the weight of circumstances actually too much to bear? Then all that remains is for them to destroy me, and even there I am more than able to bear the end with courage and dignity. Even on my deathbed, or swallowed up by a broken heart, I remain my own master.

Do I find myself feeling discouraged because I am poor? Then I can stop thinking that being rich is itself a worthy thing. Do I find myself distracted by lust? Then I can assure myself that I am a man and not an animal. Do I find myself saddened because I am not loved? Then I can start remembering that giving love is greater than receiving it. The thinking will moderate the feeling.

The last ivory-billed woodpecker has probably already passed away, but I’d like to think he did so completely content with himself. I should want no less for myself.

8.48

Remember that the ruling faculty is invincible, when self-collected it is satisfied with itself, if it does nothing that it does not choose to do, even if it resist from mere obstinacy.

What then will it be when it forms a judgment about anything aided by reason and deliberately? Therefore the mind that is free from passions is a citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for refuge and for the future be inexpugnable.

He then who has not seen this is an ignorant man; but he who has seen it and does not fly to this refuge is unhappy.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.48 (tr Long)

My own uncanny ability to be quite a stubborn fellow, usually to my detriment, already tells me how powerful the mind and the will can be. If I insist that my thoughts and choices aren’t going to budge, they are most certainly not going to budge.

If I am just being obstinate, of course, I am acting from a base instinct to puff myself up, and I do so by standing against something, reveling in conflict and opposition. There may not be much, if any, thinking going on at all. It is the sort of strength that is quite brutal.

But now imagine if that sort of commitment is joined together with a love of wisdom, informed by conscience, and in the service of character. It can now become something distinctly human. Driven by virtue instead of vanity, love instead of lust, justice instead of anger, it no longer merely stands against something, but rather works in conjunction with the good in all things. It goes with the grain of Nature, not against it.

Take the sort of strength we see in being merely stubborn, and let it be put in the service of moral excellence. You now have a fortress that is truly unassailable.

Do I feel my passions running away with me? Am I shackled by resentment, jealousy, or greed to consume? Let sound judgment tame my passions, redirect them, and put them in their rightful place. My reason, which can discover meaning and purpose in all things, is my refuge from losing myself.

Do I feel overwhelmed by my circumstances? Am I convinced I can longer bear being hated, ignored, ridiculed, passed by, or abused? Let sound judgment temper my circumstances, accept them for what they are, and find what is good in each and every one of them. My reason, which can allow me to always depend only on the virtue that is within my power, is my refuge from whatever may happen to me.

I need not fear, despair, or surrender to my worst inclinations when I can find complete safety and contentment within myself. There should be no anxiety about losing what can’t be lost.

8.49

Say nothing more to yourself than what the first appearances report.

Suppose that it has been reported to you that a certain person speaks ill of you. This has been reported, but that you have been injured, that has not been reported.

I see that my child is sick. I do see, but that he is in danger, I do not see.

Thus then always abide by the first appearances, and add nothing yourself from within, and then nothing happens to you. Or rather add something like a man who knows everything that happens in the world.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.49 (tr Long)

In a more clinical sense, just stick to the facts. In a more personal sense, never allow an estimation to make something any more than it is in itself, thereby making it unbearable for oneself.

If I consider the events in my life that seemed the most painful, I will immediately think of losing a friend and of losing a child. The memory of both occasions is still very vivid for me, and I can recall that first moment where the simple reality of what had happened set in.

I realized that where I had once assumed trust, there was now deception. I realized that where there was once life, there was life no more. There is certain sense of shock, but also of profound clarity, when something like that is revealed.

And though I couldn’t really measure it by any amount of time, the awareness was very soon followed by the deepest sense of hurt, the lowest despair, and the sharpest anger. So as I cried and wallowed I naturally assumed that it was the events themselves that caused the grief, and I tried to come to terms with those events. What I didn’t realize was that I was causing myself the grief, and I really needed to come to terms with myself.

Throughout the world, in all sorts of ways, things will come and things will go. Some will do so in harmony with Nature, and others will do so because people choose to fight against Nature, but in either case what has happened has happened. I must simply begin with that. It then remains my responsibility to transform any circumstance into something good instead of something evil.

I need to consider first the occurrence, and then quite separately how my judgment will add my own sense of meaning and purpose to the occurrence. If I am filled with an attitude of conflict and resentment, then I may think that whatever has happened can only destroy me. But if I am filled with an attitude of peace and acceptance, then I may think that whatever has happened can help me to better myself.

My thinking will color whether I take something to be a punishment or an opportunity. I am the one who will determine what it will mean to me, for good or for ill.

None of this should suggest denying how we feel, or encourage us to become cold and heartless. If I am confronted with pain or confusion, let those feelings come, but let them also be rightly understood. Let me work with them and not against them, ordering them toward the building of character. If something hurts, I need not assume that only harm will follow. Healing can also follow.

What am I adding to events? If I am adding anything, should that not be an awareness that everything, however confusing and mysterious, has its place in Providence?

I shouldn’t even be speaking of a happening as good or bad, pleasant or painful, but of my response to a happening as good or bad, pleasant or painful. Discerning this difference is truly liberating.

8.50

“A cucumber is bitter.” Throw it away. “There are briers in the road.” Turn aside from them. This is enough.

Do not add, “And why were such things made in the world?” For you will be ridiculed by a man who is acquainted with Nature, as you would be ridiculed by a carpenter and shoemaker if you found fault because you see in their workshop shavings and cuttings from the things that they make.

And yet they have places into which they can throw these shavings and cuttings, and the Universal Nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything within her that appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without, nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays.

She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.50 (tr Long)

This is one my very favorite passage in the works of Marcus Aurelius. It speaks directly to a misunderstanding I must regularly overcome, one that I suspect is also an obstacle for many others.

I may see something in life that appears unfair, or broken, or painful, or inconvenient, or simply unnecessary, and I may then wonder why such things are even allowed to exist. If they are obstacles and hindrances, or just wasted, why would Providence permit them?

At the very least I will begin to complain about them, and my complaints can easily become resentments. I think of all the times I have griped that it is too hot or too cold, or that greedy and thoughtless people surround me, or that Nature would dare to allow me to feel any sort of pain.

At the very worst, I will transform my own frustration into a metaphysical conundrum. I will use my dissatisfaction as an excuse to insist that the Universe can never truly be subject to Providence, because there are bits I find to be a troublesome burden. It can actually end up growing into the problem of how a loving God could possibly permit the existence of evil.

Yet everything is a part of the whole, and even what I might consider to be an evil will exist so that out it may come a greater good. Nature never wastes anything, or discards anything, or considers anything to be useless. If it exists, it exists for a perfectly good reason, though I might not grasp this immediately through my limited awareness, or through my stubborn insistence.

Is it an obstacle to me? Then I can cast it aside, or walk around it, or even make something worthy out of it, just like those proverbial lemons. Yet notice how anything I do can do with something painful already gives me a chance to make myself better, and so it has unwittingly served a wonderful purpose after all!

The cucumber and the brier are what they are, and they are meant to be what they are. What I am is measured by my own wisdom and virtue, by my power to do good, and not by what other things do to me. I can still transform anything for my own moral good.

And Nature herself transforms everything, rebuilds it, and recycles it, so that nothing ever gets thrown away. Is it just a leftover piece of junk, some residue, or a worn-out part? Give it a moment. Before you know it, Providence will change it into something else, and it will have a new lease on life. It passes away, and then becomes new.

Without the wood shavings the carpenter could never use his plane. And Nature is so thrifty that even those shavings on the floor shall be put to a good use.

8.51.1

Neither in your actions be sluggish, nor in your conversation without method, nor wandering in your thoughts, nor let there be in your soul inward contention or external effusion, nor in life be so busy as to have no leisure. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.51 (tr Long)

When I am being prideful, this seems like totally unnecessary advice. Of course I should be active, thoughtful, committed, in harmony with myself and my world, and taking the time to smell the roses. What fool would think that this isn’t the right way to go?

And yet I will fail to do any of this, time and time again, because I am not living my own life, but coasting through my own life.

Yes, I suspect you know that you’ve done it as well, and far more often than you’d like to admit.

It may somehow seem easier, or more convenient, to just shut myself off, and to let others make my decisions for me. I don’t even require any particular person telling me what to do, since it is enough to just go with the general flow of fashion and power.

Get a fancy degree? Make money? Look important? Pose for the photographs? Say all the right things, while doing absolutely nothing? Check.

I observe how we all say that we are so busy in our lives, and I will reflect on how the worldly needs of life are so much easier than they have ever been, but yet we say that we have no time at all for anything else. We obsess about the deadlines at work, paying the bills, the cocktail parties, trucking the children from one pampered activity to another, and above all else, making ourselves look like we are so very brilliant. Is that actually being busy, or is it busywork?

I am getting busy with all the wrong things. I am doing much, but I understand less. I look to what is around me, while I neglect what is within me.

I need to put my priorities in order, and dedicate myself to all the right things. When I am busy with the good life, rightly understood, I will actually find the leisure to rest in genuine joy and contentment.

Living with justice and compassion actually takes very little time, and can become almost effortless with the right frame of mind. The habits of virtue take care of themselves, if only we choose to love the right things in this world.

Once I manage all of the essentials, that will leave me so much of an opportunity to savor all the rest of life. No, the essentials are not fame and fortune. All that is essential is living in truth and love.

If I am too busy to be thoughtful, brave, moderate, or fair, I’m in the wrong business. If I do not have time to love my friends, where has my time truly gone?

8.51.2

. . . Suppose that men kill you, cut you in pieces, curse you. What then can these things do to prevent your mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just?

For instance, if a man should stand by a clear pure spring, and curse it, the spring never ceases sending up potable water. And if he should cast clay into it or filth, it will speedily disperse them and wash them out, and will not be at all polluted.

How then shalt you possess a perpetual fountain and not a mere well? By forming yourself hourly to freedom conjoined with contentment, simplicity, and modesty.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.51 (tr Long)

The harm that others can do to me will only depend upon my own estimation of what it means to be harmed. Many things can be given, and many things can be taken away, but if I understand that the purity of my own thoughts and choices can always be my own, what real harm can befall me?

I adore this image of spring water. Throw dirt in it, and it will slowly but surely clear itself. Try to block its flow, and it will with patient force arise somewhere else. Man may do what he wills to Nature, but Nature always finds her own way, confounding the ways of men. What has been poisoned will always end up cleansed.

I have another image that helps me to grasp this point for myself. When I was very young, my parents bought a home in a new neighborhood. A move isn’t always easy for a child, and there was much that I missed from our old humble apartment. Still, my mother would try to get me interested in all the exciting things around us. There was a park a block away. We explored it inch by inch together, only to find a huge section of an old aqueduct covered in wild raspberry plants.

As summers came around, we took our buckets and harvested our feast of fruit. Few things ever tasted as sweet.

Some years later, I was horrified one day to find that someone had cleared that land, right down to the dirt. Perhaps a neighbor complained to the Parks Department about all of the ugly overgrown weeds? The raspberries were gone. I couldn’t tell any of my tough friends about my loss, but my mother understood.

But it wasn’t over. Another few years along, now a sullen teenager, I sat myself down on the slope of that same aqueduct. It was again full of all kinds of plants. I was by this point full of piss and vinegar. The world didn’t seem to be going my way, and when you’re young, that’s all that seems to matter.

And right there next to me was a raspberry bush, not as big as the ones I remembered from before, but still laden with ripe fruit. I think I must have had an allergy attack, because I got a bit teary; there was clearly no other explanation. I gathered a few of the berries, and brought them home. My mother and I ate them with a bit of powdered sugar. She might not remember, but I certainly do.

Many more years after that, someone I had allowed to hurt me very deeply decided to buy a house, right by where those raspberries could still be found. What comes around goes around. I can’t bring myself to go home anymore now, but I still fondly remember the raspberries.

The water will become clear. All the things that grow on this Earth find their way back to where they belong. Everything is in it place, even if it doesn’t seem so at the time.

A mind content with itself, depending upon nothing beyond the good it may find within its own convictions, will be pushed this way and that. Yet it can remain fully itself, flowing as it should, growing right back as it should, regardless of all the polluting and clearing others may attempt.

8.52

He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is. And he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, or what the world is.

But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself. What then do you think of him who avoids or seeks the praise of those who applaud, of men who know not either where they are or who they are?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.52 (tr Long)

Put on a blindfold, and try to walk around a room, even one you have been around for years and years. Now add a bunch of cats. And don’t forget to put in some rocking chairs, just to make it more interesting.

This would seem like a foolish thing to do, yet most of us do it every day. We have no idea where we are, so we stumble our way through it all.

Get in your car, and try to drive to a strange address that someone has given you. Don’t look at a map. Don’t even bother to use your fancy phone to give you directions. Just drive around randomly until you get where you need to go.

This would seem like a foolish thing to do, yet most of us do it every day. We have no idea where we are going, but we imagine we don’t need any help.

Pretend you are going to a job interview, expecting some bigwig to ask you who you are. Give him your resume, and tell him all about where you went to school, or name some prizes you have won, or brag about how much someone else has paid you.

This would seem like a foolish thing to do, yet most of us do it every day. Offer the accidents, but avoid the essence. We have no idea who we are, so we provide platitudes and excuses.  

Where am I? Where am I going? Who am I?

When was the last time I answered these questions with insight and integrity? Or did I spout out vanities, ways to make me seem like I was strong and confident, even as I was ignorant and foolish?

Behind all of this is really the most encompassing question: what is this world I live in? I can’t know where I am, where I am going, or who I am without making some sense of the order of Nature. Purpose is only possible within the context of the whole.

As if it couldn’t get any worse, I somehow manage to compound my error. Instead of just being a fool myself, a fellow with no idea why he is here, I go about seeking the praise and approval of other people who have no idea why they are here.

They tell me that a fool is a fellow who can’t play the game. I humbly suggest that a fool is rather the fellow who can only play the game.

The philosopher will ask himself these questions all of the time, but he is told that he is insane. Not eccentric, mind you, because only a rich man can be eccentric; a poor man is considered insane for asking those very same questions.

Yet truly, if I am unable to explain to myself where I am, where I am going, who I am, and how I fit into the order of the world, I’m not really much of anything at all. I am just flotsam and jetsam.

8.53

Do you wish to be praised by a man who curses himself three times an hour?

Would you wish to please a man who does not please himself?

Does a man please himself who repents of nearly everything that he does?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.53 (tr Long)

It is odd enough that we should be interested in defining ourselves by the respect of others; it already reduces the value of people to the estimation of other people. What is even more troubling is how often we further seek the approval of people who are hardly worthy of such authority over us.

Plato famously observed that those who are drawn to power and influence are precisely those who least deserve to have them, since the very fact that they desire a life of reputation reveals a neglect of the life of character. Even as they are so committed to appearing a certain way on the outside, there is likely a corresponding emptiness on the inside. They are grasping, filled with a longing to possess other things, when they do not even posses themselves.

I did not see this at first, but over time it became quite clear to me that those who pursue the life of honor are quite often the most anxious, insecure, and frustrated people you will ever meet. Don’t be fooled by the fine veneer, which is there to compensate.

Should I really seek the respect of someone who has no real respect for himself? Should I want to be admired by a fellow who does not know how to find happiness within his own soul, but feeds off the souls of others? Should I put people on pedestals when they can’t even look at themselves in the mirror without feeling a sense of shame?

This needs to go both ways. I should be wary of others who measure life by trading in the currency of praise, while I must also be wary of being seduced by this illusion in my own thinking.

I have rarely been in positions involving any real influence, but on the very few occasions where I have been praised or admired, even in the slightest way, I could feel a certain satisfaction in the attention. I found that the sensation could easily become a diversion from doing the right thing for its own sake, to be slowly but surely replaced with doing the popular thing for my sake.

So as unpleasant as it may at first seem, I will often try to deliberately avoid being seen doing something well. If it is at all possible, I choose to attempt something virtuous in private, and not in public; I don’t always trust myself not to desire the admiration for the deed, instead of just loving the deed.

How can I possibly want to be thought well of by others, when I know that I am lying to them? My character improves by being somebody, not being thought of as being somebody.

8.54

No longer let your breathing only act in concert with the air that surrounds you, but let your intelligence also now be in harmony with the Intelligence that embraces all things.

For the Intelligent Power is no less diffused in all parts, and pervades all things for him who is willing to draw it to him, than the aerial power for him who is able to respire it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.54 (tr Long)

Stoic philosophers will speak of oikeiôsis, a term that can be difficult to translate. Though I can muddle my way here or there with a phrase or two, I am hardly a scholar of Ancient Greek.

I speak only for myself when I say that I translate it in my own head as “affinity” or “belonging”, seeing all other things as immediately joined to myself, and seeing myself as immediately joined to all other things.

I do know it comes from the term for a household or family, oikos, and therefore I think of what makes a good family, or any sort of right association. So in my own set of values I believe that such belonging is really nothing more than the fullest expression of love. Your own mileage may vary.

I would often joke in class that it is much easier to say “I love you” than to say “I share in oikeiôsis with you.” For good or for ill, I’m the sort of fellow who prefers to use an earthy and direct term like happiness instead of eudaimonia, or virtue instead of arête. I am quite wary of linguistic snobbery. If I have to resort to another language, I worry that I’m not really expressing myself well enough in my own.

But the sort of love I mean here is not just physical desire, or emotional affection, or even friendship and brotherhood. It goes way beyond that, even as it may include all of the others. It concerns the total giving of oneself. It is “love” in the fullest sense.

It is about my responsibility to share in and with all other people, and with all other things. It is about my willing and giving engagement with everything in the world, recognizing that I am a part of that whole. Each piece is layered, nestled, and intertwined with every other.

When I breathe in the air around me, I will use it to nourish myself, and when I exhale air back into what is around me, I will in turn give something back from myself. I may not be conscious of it at the time, but I am sharing, in my own small way, with other beings, all of whom participate in the same Being.

Someone once told me that every time I took a breath, I was breathing in molecules also breathed by Caesar, or the Buddha, or Jesus, or Hitler. I am not bright enough as a physicist or mathematician to know if this is literally true, but I certainly understand it to be figuratively true.

It isn’t just about the physical act of breathing, but about the intellectual act of sharing in the same Universe. We might like to believe, out of our arrogance and pride, that our awareness has absolutely nothing to do with the awareness of others. We are sorely mistaken.

The thoughts of the Fascist may seem to have nothing to do with the thoughts of the Communist. The thoughts of the Christian may seem to have nothing to do with the thoughts of the Atheist.

Yet they most certainly do, since all human thought is nothing but an aspect of Universal Thought. Let me stop being obsessed with only the splinters, and let me see myself within a Unity.

Take a breath. We are all breathing that same air. Consider a thought. We are all sharing in the same expression of Mind.

8.55

Generally, wickedness does no harm at all to the Universe, and particularly the wickedness of one man does no harm to another.

It is only harmful to him who has it in his power to be released from it as soon as he shall choose.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.55 (tr Long)

How often have I thought that life is unfair, that the world is just too dark and dreary, or that I have received less than I deserve?

The Stoic Turn is, however, quite a radical thing. It tells us that what happens will happen, and what is fair is only up to us. It bathes us in light, and reminds us that any darkness is of our own making. It insists that the merit of our lives has nothing to do with what we receive, but is all about what we do.

Of course there is evil. I see people doing it all of the time. But there is the key. What another may do does not determine what I should do.

So you have tried to hurt me. Must I try to hurt you?

So you have given me pain. Must I try to inflict pain?

So I have gotten less. Must I try to make you have less, so that I can have more?

The Stoic Turn only makes sense from a certain view of life. Things will happen as they will, and that is usually outside my power. That these things will happen isn’t evil in any way at all. What you and I choose to do with these circumstances is what will make them good or evil. Morality is not in the things or events, but in our response to the things or events.

Another has lived poorly? That is entirely on him. Have I lived poorly? That is entirely on me. The abuse and the rejection do not need to harm me. No, they actually harm only those who try to take advantage of me or dismiss me.

They say life isn’t fair. Distinguo. I distinguish, and I seek to clarify. Yes, people will not always act well. Let them be, and allow Nature to takes its own course. Now I will decide to act with justice, and that is quite fair. Life will only be as fair as I make it for myself, as I use it to determine my own character.

I can choose to see wickedness as the effort of ignorant minds, as the consequence of misguided choices. In the bigger picture, Providence will turn it to where it needs to be turned. For myself, I will turn it to where it helps me to be a better man.

Understand that bitter people will be bitter, and that nasty people will be nasty, and that the cynically self-righteous will be cynically self-righteous. There is always the victim of the hour, depending upon the trend of the hour. I don’t need to be a victim, or a whiner, or a complainer. There may be gratification in bitching, but there is only peace in acceptance and responsibility.

8.56

To my own free will, the free will of my neighbor is just as indifferent as his poor breath and flesh.

For though we are made especially for the sake of one another, still the ruling power of each of us has its own office, for otherwise my neighbor's wickedness would be my harm, which God has not willed, in order that my unhappiness may not depend on another.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.56 (tr Long)

Sharing in the same rational nature, we are indeed made to cooperate, to work with and for one another, to participate together in what is good. Yet cooperation should never to be confused with dominance, and I am not made to be the master over someone else’s judgment, just as he is not made to be the master over my judgment.

Think of how often we will insist on trying to violently rule others according to our own wills, and consider also how much suffering and grief we bring onto ourselves by doing so.

If another knows better than I do, and is able to live better than I do, let him assist me, and let him advise me, and let him guide me by his own example. If I were one day to find myself wiser or more virtuous than another, I would be called to do exactly the same. Force and coercion will only hinder a man on the outside, but will not help him to improve himself on the inside.

I must remember, of course, that being indifferent to the choice of another, as with any circumstance beyond myself, isn’t about not caring. It means rather that whatever anything may be in and of itself, it is only good or bad for me according to what I make of it to improve my own character.

I should most certainly want my fellows to live well, and to thereby be happy, as I would hope they would also want for me; I cannot do that for them, and they cannot do that for me.

How often have we heard people say that they can’t be happy without someone else doing this or that, or that they must work ceaselessly to “make” someone else happy?

As disturbing as it may seem, no one else ever makes anyone else better. No one else ever makes anyone else happier. No one else ever saves any other man. We might be an opportunity to be of help to others, but we are never the agents. Only an individual choice, deep within the self, can ever do that.

“But I will make him change!” No, you won’t. Only he can change himself. Walk with him, hold his hand, and encourage him as best you can, but you will not change him. That is up to him.

We propose all sorts of forms of government, suggesting democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy. Let us indeed ask ourselves what sort of circumstances can assist us in life, and let us debate the good and bad in each. What sort of an organization will help all of us, each and every one of us, to exist more fully?

In the end, however, we are all of us, each and every one of us, kings and queens of our own domains. It doesn’t take titles, or lands, or wealth. It requires only rule over oneself.

There are as many monarchs in this Universe as there are creatures of reason and choice. Some will be tyrants, and some will be bringers of peace. That is all up to them.

Behind all of it, there is only one Supreme Monarch, who in infinite wisdom allows us to make our own way, for better or for worse.

8.57

The sun appears to be poured down, and in all directions indeed it is diffused, yet it is not effused. For this diffusion is extension. Accordingly its rays are called extensions, because they are extended.

But one may judge what kind of a thing a ray is, if he looks at the sun's light passing through a narrow opening into a darkened room, for it is extended in a right line, and as it were is divided when it meets with any solid body which stands in the way and intercepts the air beyond; but there the light remains fixed, and does not glide or fall off.

Such then ought to be the outpouring and diffusion of the understanding, and it should in no way be an effusion, but an extension, and it should make no violent or impetuous collision with the obstacles which are in its way; nor yet fall down, but be fixed, and enlighten that which receives it.

For a body will deprive itself of the illumination, if it does not admit it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.57 (tr Long)

I once met a freshman at M.I.T. who was struggling to tell me how light was both like a wave and a particle, while at the same time being neither. To his credit, he was trying awfully hard, but he ended up falling back on a rather amusing claim. “Well, we’re the scientists, so you’re just going to have to trust us.” I’d heard that from theologians discussing the Holy Trinity all the time, so I understood completely.

The scientists may always be working on explaining exactly why it is happening, though we can all surely describe a little something about how it is happening. Light seems to move straight from its source, far faster than I can follow it, and when it comes up against an object, it will behave in all sorts of interesting ways.

The rays of light may be absorbed, or reflected, or bent, or spread about, but they continue to act upon things, to extend outward, and not simply to fall away or cease to be. The rays are not effused, Marcus Aurelius says, but diffused, in that they do not flow away like a liquid but are cast toward things and at things. Using another analogy, the rays of light stand firm and are always directed, even as they do not force themselves with violence upon things.

This can tell us something about why light is often used as an image of understanding, and why the actions of mind can be fittingly compared to illumination.

Light radiates outward from its source, coming in contact with the objects around it, acting upon them, making them clear and visible as the rays move into them, through them, around them, and off of them.

So too, mind radiates outward from its source, coming in contact with the objects around it, acting upon them, making them clear and intelligible as the thoughts move into them, through them, around them, and off of them.

As the sun is to things as visible, so mind is to things as intelligible. As light remains focused, so thought should remain focused. As a ray casts itself upon things, so understanding casts itself upon things. It acts, reacts, is diffused, and transforms, yet it does not overwhelm what it meets, or just fade into nothingness.

This is all the more fitting for the Stoic, because just as light remains directed yet adaptable to objects, mind remains directed yet adaptable to the circumstances of our lives. For a man to cast his own light is not to blind others, or to burn away what is around him, but for the brightness to show him the clear path for his own choices and actions.

Mind is diffused, not effused.

8.58

He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation, or a different kind of sensation.

But if you shall have no sensation, neither will you feel any harm; and if you shall acquire another kind of sensation, you will be a different kind of living being, and you will not cease to live.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.58 (tr Long)

Good grief, I do hate it when perfectly sound reasoning gets in the way of my perfectly good moping.

If I am afraid of death because it will be the end, I literally have nothing to fear. If I am afraid of death because it will be something else, then it isn’t really death I’m afraid of at all, just something different.

That is why Socrates suggested that we are only afraid of death because we are afraid of what is unknown to us. If death means that my consciousness will cease, then I can see that as a relief from suffering and worry, a well-earned respite from the burdens of life. If death means going on to some other state of existence, then I can see that as a wonderful opportunity.

I will admit, however, that I have worried about how death may indeed be some sort of transformation, but perhaps a terrible transformation into something far worse, something more painful than I can imagine, something irredeemable. See, all that talk about fire and brimstone gets me into some troubling thoughts.

But this is one of those places where Stoicism is of such great comfort to me, because I can know that no evil will ever befall me that I have not myself invited into my life. I know this not simply out of some article of faith, or out of some desperate hope, but from two of the most basic facts about life.

First, as unclear as it may at times seem, I know that Providence will always act for the sake of what is good. Whatever will happen, will happen for a reason, and that reason is always subject to the purpose of the whole. There can be nothing bad in anything being what it was made to be.

Second, as frustrating as it may at times seem, I know that what is good for me, as a creature of reason and choice, proceeds entirely from my own judgment and action. Whatever may occur, however strange or powerful the conditions, will always exist for me as an occasion to live with character.

That is my happiness, that is my joy, and it can never be taken from me. Providence has made me, and the world I live in, to be that way. Bad things won’t happen to me, because nothing that “happens” is actually bad in and of itself, and everything that “happens” can be ordered to good

This may seem odd or ridiculous to some, but only to those who continue to measure the value of life by the circumstances, and not by what is done with the circumstances.

My Black Dog would like to distract me, by telling me that this hurts too much, or that will never get better, or how I no longer have the power to rule myself. But the Black Dog lies, and his power is only in doubt and confusion.

Socrates expresses all of this beautifully in the Apology:

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.  He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance.

8.59

Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then, or bear with them.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.59 (tr Long)

I hear much about how we must all work together, about the importance of building community, about sharing both our burdens and our benefits in common.

Some people will mean this from the very bottom of their hearts, and when they prove this through the way they decide to live, they will earn my undying respect.

Some will merely mouth the words, and then dismiss others or manipulate others, and when they reveal this through the way they decide to live, I will find myself tempted to despair and rage.

When I succumb to that temptation, I twist myself into exactly what I claim to oppose. When I see difference, either of principle or of preference, I lash out in rejection and anger. When I see someone who I think has done wrong, I only make myself wrong in response. I should be very careful about what I condemn and cast aside, since the act of condemning and casting aside is itself a denial of unity in purpose.

There came a point, slowly but surely, where I saw that I had done enough evil in an ignorant defense of what was good. It really isn’t that difficult to understand, and then to choose to live, in a way that sees conflict as an opportunity for peace, and hatred as an occasion for love.

I once cared for someone so deeply, beyond any mere words I could express, that when I found only dishonesty and disloyalty, I would be consumed by resentment, and obsessed with blame. There comes a time when that must all be let go, because no act of vice is ever improved by compounding it with any further vice.

Ah, the blame game! You have hurt me, so I will now hurt you. In all of it, whatever anyone else might do, I have dodged my own responsibility. Have you chosen to be my enemy? Let me continue to be your friend, whether you accept it or not. As always with Stoic thinking and practice, I must attend to what I should do, and not what others may do.

Sharing in the same nature, created to know and to love what is true and good, we are all made for the same end. You may deny it, and I may deny it in return, but our stubbornness only reveals our vanity.

We must all pay the price for what we do, and Providence will always make absolutely certain of that. But why must the price to be paid, however great, involve only suffering and loss? Justice, in whatever form it takes, should seek to improve, and never destroy. To do right by and for people is to help them, not to harm them.

However great the struggle, let us help one another to become better. Let us support one another and teach one another about right and wrong; if someone doesn’t want to learn, let our love take on the form of tolerance and compassion.

8.60

In one way an arrow moves, in another way the mind.

The mind indeed, both when it exercises caution and when it is employed about inquiry, moves straight onward not the less, and to its object.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.60 (tr Long)

Both the arrow released by the archer, and the thought released by the mind, will always be directed toward the target. Yet while the arrow will always follow a steady and simple arc, the thought will stop and start, divert itself this way or that, and take a winding path, sometimes more quickly or sometimes more slowly. Still, the thought will inevitably go to its mark.

Sometimes I have taken a direct path in life, and sometimes I have taken a winding path. Sometimes my understanding races ahead, and sometimes it is bogged down. Sometimes my awareness runs straight and true, and sometimes it goes in loops. Still, the thought will inevitably go to its mark.

I am interested here not only in the distinction between the physical motion of a projectile and the mental motion of judgment, but also in the fact that however circuitous or tardy my route may be, I will end up exactly where I intend to be. This has both been to my benefit, and also my undoing.

I will go wherever I ultimately decide to go, for better or for worse. Nothing else that might stand in the way, or sway me this way or that, is ever going to change the purpose I have chosen for myself. When I have focused on the true and the good, I find peace and contentment. When I have focused on the false and the seductive, I find conflict and worry.

I end up exactly where I pointed myself from the beginning. I am the one who took the aim; let me blame nothing else. How important it is, therefore, that I orient myself rightly from the start!

Now sometimes I say that the world has tripped me up, or that the situation has made me lose my sight. These were, however, only the circumstances of my error, not the source of my error. I tripped myself up when faced with them, and I became blind by closing my eyes to them.

Every blessing or curse follows from the presence or absence of my attention. The direction of the wind, the tricks of light, and all the petty distractions are only as disruptive as I allow them to be. My own estimation guides me, and nothing else.

A Stoic, like any good man, is accountable for the direction of his life. That direction has nothing to do with the trappings around him, but with the true aim of his own character.

8.61

Enter into every man's ruling faculty, and also let every other man enter into yours.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8.61 (tr Long)

In our modern times, or more properly in our post-modern times, each mind can appear so terribly isolated from every other. My thought is my own, and your thought is your own, and the two seem to arise quite independently of one another, if not in direct opposition to one another. How often have I now heard people speaking of “my truth” as distinct from “your truth”?

And so a good many us may feel isolated, estranged, alienated. We may all be walking around in the same world, going through the same automatic motions and assaulted by all the same images, but we perceive each individual inner consciousness as trapped in a separate box. I hear people tell me not only that I don’t understand them, but also that I can’t possibly understand them.

I suspect, of course, that this is hardly a new problem, as human nature is already made in such a way that it confronts obstacles in discovering itself. We have only found new ways of expressing that struggle.

Seeing that shared human nature, as a part within all of Nature, is the key to overcoming the anxiety and despair that come from feeling alone.

I should recognize that for all our accidents, we participate in the same essence. Reason is never something closed in upon itself, but is by definition open and directed toward all that is present to it. Mind does not gaze upon its own emptiness, but is filled by and through other things. Most wonderfully, mind can recognize itself when it engages with another mind.

We all share in the same type of awareness, and live in the same world, and so we are all seeking the same truth. Truth is to be found in the unity of all that is real, not in obsessing about the broken bits and pieces.

In the simplest sense, I can try to express my thoughts to others with clarity, and listen to how others express their thoughts with patience.

On a deeper level, I can try to think with another, instead of only thinking about another. I can ask myself not only what he says, but also how and why he understands it the way he does.

Even more profoundly, I can reflect that every mind is an expression of Universal Mind, just as every being is an expression of Universal Being. The Stoic sees that nothing ever exists in isolation, and that shattering the illusion of estrangement requires only remembering that all things are inherently one.

I may not be recognized or praised for it, but I never need to feel alone when I conceive of myself as necessarily joined to everyone, and everything, else.