LIAM MILBURN: Living with Nature: Reflections on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 9

Living with Nature:

Reflections on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 9

Liam Milburn

9.1.1

He who acts unjustly acts impiously. For since the Universal Nature has made rational animals for the sake of one another, to help one another according to their deserts, but in no way to injure one another, he who transgresses her will is clearly guilty of impiety towards the Highest Divinity. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.1 (tr Long)

A fellow eccentric and lover of all things classical once suggested to me that virtue was the most neglected term and concept of our generation. I understood his point immediately, because the fashion of the day is to define ourselves by the pleasures we feel, and by the convenience of our circumstances.

If you say that the excellence of how well we live is the only complete measure of life, and that all other things, however preferred they may be, are indifferent, you will likely find yourself considered odd, maybe even dangerous.

I added, however, that perhaps a certain type of virtue, the one we call piety, was even lower in our esteem. After all, people do still speak about being fair and just, though they hardly ever speak about being pious. We look to ourselves quite a bit, but to God not so often. That may be a part of our problem.

Trends will come and go, so I try not to give too much weight to such things. I find that the obstacles to happiness described by Marcus Aurelius are much the same as the ones we face here and now.

Yet I do think it interesting that whenever I see us fail at practicing justice, it is often because we are only paying lip service to a word. After all, we can’t be fair and just if we do not have a greater frame of reference to work from, if we lack piety for the very order and purpose of Nature.

I have always understood justice as giving to each his proper due, taking no more than I deserve, and giving no less than others deserve. I have long appreciated Plato’s lovely definition from the Republic, that justice is minding my business.

I have also always understood piety as a reverence for what is greater than myself, for the Divine in particular, though it can also include my elders, my betters, or my community.

Notice how piety and justice are quite closely related, in that each involves the principle of respect, respecting my neighbor as sharing in the same nature, and respecting the Divine as the source of all of Nature. In a sense, one is a horizontal love, between equals, and the other is a vertical love, from an inferior to a superior.

And neither can really exist without the other. I cannot honor both my own reason and that of another without understanding how we all exist within the order of Providence, and I cannot honor the order of Providence without a concern for its creatures. The purpose of the part is meaningless if separated from the purpose of the whole.

He who fails to give his neighbor his due, also fails to give God his due, and so the unjust man is also of necessity an impious man. Act contrary to the nature of the effect, and you act contrary to the Nature of the Cause.

9.1.2

. . . And he too who lies is guilty of impiety to the same Divinity. For the Universal Nature is the Nature of things that are, and things that are have a relation to all things that come into existence.

And further, this Universal Nature is named Truth, and is the prime cause of all things that are true.

He then who lies intentionally is guilty of impiety, inasmuch as he acts unjustly by deceiving.

And he also who lies unintentionally, inasmuch as he is at variance with the Universal Nature, and inasmuch as he disturbs the order by fighting against the Nature of the world.

For he fights against it, who is moved of himself to that which is contrary to truth, for he had received powers from Nature, through the neglect of which he is not able now to distinguish falsehood from truth. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.1 (tr Long)

Just as we may say we seek justice, we may say we also seek truth. But if we are to broaden and loosen the definition of truth further and further, we may end up saying that anything and everything is true. If we remove the order of Nature itself, truth will only be whatever our own preference may be.

I recall how, in the early 2000’s, I began noticing the term “integrity” more often in the professional world, including academia, complete with corporate names, brands, and advertising slogans. The point was, of course, about selling a product, and so it was the appearance of truthfulness that mattered, not the reality. Something was honest as long as it looked good, dishonest only when it looked bad.

Truthfulness is not just putting on a show; it goes to the very heart of who we are as rational creatures, and how we are related to the good of the whole world. To say that something is true is more than a mere assertion, but the correspondence of the mind to what is real, a conformity of our thoughts to the world we think about. It is judging things as they are in themselves, and an opening of awareness to being. The truth is in what is, not only in what I would wish.

It is the purpose of the mind to understand things as they are, and so when the mind judges things as they are not, it deceives itself, and goes contrary to its own nature.

It is further the purpose of speech to communicate truth to others, and so when speech expresses things as they are not, it deceives others, and goes contrary both to its own nature and the nature of others.

True and false are far deeper than convenience and inconvenience. Truth is a respect for the order of Nature, and falsehood a disrespect for the order of Nature. The dishonest man is therefore also an unjust and impious man, because he does not respect himself, or his neighbor, or the world around him, or the very Divine source of that world, from which all other things proceed. By affirming something that is not, he denies the way of everything that is.

I can make all sorts of excuses to justify a lie, but I know that whenever I have been dishonest, it has always been a way to avoid being responsible for myself, to deny the reality for the sake of convenience. I will prefer to appear right than to be right, to feel good instead of doing good. That is a betrayal of my humanity, and a betrayal of the Creator who made me human. Whether it is intentional or unintentional, I have strayed from the path.

If it is true, it is in harmony with Nature, and I should say yes. If it is false, it is in conflict with Nature, and I should say no. It need be no more difficult than that.

9.1.3

. . . And indeed he who pursues pleasure as good, and avoids pain as evil, is guilty of impiety.

For of necessity such a man must often find fault with the Universal Nature, alleging that it assigns things to the bad and the good contrary to their deserts, because frequently the bad are in the enjoyment of pleasure and possess the things that procure pleasure, but the good have pain for their share and the things that cause pain.

And further, he who is afraid of pain will sometimes also be afraid of some of the things that will happen in the world, and even this is impiety. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is plainly impiety. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.1 (tr Long)

To seek pleasure, and to avoid pain, is sadly the default path that many of will choose to take in this life. It appeals to what is most immediate, instinctive and base within us. It is the lowest common denominator, the easy way out, and it allows us to act without having to judge about why we should act.

The primacy of pleasure results in a person who is, as Plato described in the Republic, turned upside down, where reason is in the service of the passions, not the passions in the service of reason. Thinking requires commitment and responsibility, while gratification asks only to be pampered.

If we only chose to look a little deeper, we would see why we have all our wires crossed. Man is indeed a creature of pleasure and pain, like an animal, but he is also a creature of intellect and will, and it is the intellect that should guide our way, because only it is able to distinguish between true and false, right and wrong. The passions give us feelings, but reason permits us to understand these feelings, what they mean, and how we should make use of them.

It’s funny that even when we say pleasure is the highest good, we still somehow think it unfair when bad people receive pleasure, and good people receive pain. We are quite aware that there should be a higher standard for human life, resting in the merit of what we do, not simply in the satisfaction of what we feel.

And so the seeker of pleasure is not only a selfish man, but also an unjust man, and therefore an impious man, because he acts contrary to Nature. He does not respect the moral worth in others, replacing this with his own desires, and so he rejects the very order of all things.

If he is only fleeing from pain, he will avoid many things he ought to do, and he will consider events by their convenience, not by their greater purpose. If he is only following pleasure, he will do many things he shouldn’t do, and he will treat others unjustly, as a means for his own enjoyment.

The seeker of pleasure casts aside all the good in the world for only the good of his own desires. In trying to make his passions supreme, he is an affront to others, and an affront to the Divine.

This sounds like a horrible way to live, and indeed it is. Now I ask myself how often I have lived in precisely this brutish sort of manner, and so I remind myself about the urgency of choosing to be a better man. The illusion of fancy trappings or refined appearances cannot disguise a twisted and selfish soul.

9.1.4

. . . Now with respect to the things towards which the Universal Nature is equally affected—for it would not have made both, unless it was equally affected towards both—towards those who wish to follow Nature should be of the same mind with it, and equally affected.

With respect to pain, then, and pleasure, or death and life, or honor and dishonor, which the Universal Nature employs equally, whoever is not equally affected is manifestly acting impiously.

And I say that the Universal Nature employs them equally, instead of only saying that they happen alike to those who are produced in continuous series, and to those who come after them by virtue of a certain original movement of Providence, according to which it moved from a certain beginning to this ordering of things, having conceived certain principles of the things which were to be, and having determined powers productive of beings and of changes and of such like successions.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.1 (tr Long)

Whatever may happen, and whatever may come my way, I should always be equally affected by all of it. This is the classic Stoic principle of indifference. It does not mean that these things don’t matter, or that they have no meaning and purpose, or that I should ignore them, but rather that their value will be revealed only by what I choose to do with them.

If it exists within Nature, it exists for a reason. All of it, each and every bit, has its place. The world will throw things at me that seem pleasant or unpleasant. It may kill me or let me live. It may raise me up or cast me down.

Still, whatever occurs is meant to be as it is. This is why I must view gratification as no better than suffering, death as no better than life, honor as no better than dishonor. They are given to me equally, and I am asked to receive them equally, understanding that they all equally provide me an opportunity to live well.

We are so used to thinking that “good” and “bad” things happen to us, that we can hardly think outside of this context. Why has Nature done me wrong? She hasn’t. I have done myself wrong. Embrace the Stoic Turn.

If she gives me wealth or poverty, health or sickness, fame or obscurity, she is always reminding me that she has already given me the only thing I ever require to be happy, a mastery over myself. Everything else for me will proceed from my use of that mastery.

This is why the man who frets, who complains, or who demands more for himself is also impious. He rejects the strength of his own nature, and he rejects the order of Providence. He thinks of himself only by what he gets, not by what he gives. He believes that, as part of the whole, the whole should only serve him. The whole will indeed always offer benefit to him, but it will not always gratify him.

I have often wanted to hate God, to curse Him, to deny Him, because He does not give me what I want. No matter. He gives me what I need, and He gives me the freedom to make myself be as good as I decide to be.

It isn’t just that Providence makes or allows this or that to happen, but rather that Providence orders all that happens to be of use as an occasion for growth and improvement.

Effects proceed from causes, and all action toward an end requires Intelligence to direct that action. It was that way from the beginning, and it permeates the succession of everything that follows.

Piety is not a blind acceptance of uncaring fate. Piety is a profound respect for how my own choices and actions should exist within the design of all of Nature. Piety is the awe, wonder, and gratitude for being given the chance to share and cooperate with Universal Nature.

9.2

It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from mankind without having had any taste of lying and hypocrisy and luxury and pride. However, to breathe out one's life when a man has had enough of these things is the next best voyage, as the saying is.

Have you determined to abide with vice, and has not experience yet induced you to fly from this pestilence? For the destruction of the understanding is a pestilence, much more, indeed, than any such corruption and change of this atmosphere which surrounds us.

For this corruption is a pestilence of animals so far as they are animals; but the other is a pestilence of men so far as they are men.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.2 (tr Long)

Some philosophies may see the good to the exclusion of the bad, or the bad to the exclusion of the good, yet I have always been amazed at how Stoicism will manage to balance an awareness of both.

Even as all things that exist are good by their natures, it remains within the power of our judgments to abuse what is good within us. I may know that all is made to unfold as it rightly should, though this can hardly make me look away from the depths of human depravity.

If you had told me as a child the sorts of profoundly evil things I would experience in my coming years, I would not have believed you. But sure enough, both in my own immediate life and in the wider world around me, I have seen too many things that have made me want to give up hope.

Malice runs deep. Greed is thick in the air. Lies are heaped upon lies. And at times it will all feel like enough is enough.

This should hardly surprise me, because if Providence chooses to include creatures of reason and choice within its plan, there will always be both the ups and downs of human freedom. For every wise decision there will be an ignorant decision, for every act of love there will an act of hate.

The ignorance and the hatred will not destroy the good in this life, because they will always give me the chance to transform them into what is good, but they remain a burden to be borne nonetheless.

It might have been a much more pleasant life if I never had to face the corruption of vice at all. Still, I suspect that even what little virtue I have managed to build within me would never have come to pass, if I had not first been challenged with these obstacles, both from others and within myself. Confronting malice has helped me to love. Confronting greed has helped me to give. Confronting lies has helped to be true.

It may not have been the smoothest journey, but if I have done all that I can do to live with Nature, I can be content that it has not been in vain. I will have fulfilled my part, however small, and I can move on knowing that I have made it through the storm. I will now rightly be grateful for being relieved from my watch.

The pollution in the air may clog our lungs and sicken our bodies, while the pollution in our minds will smother our virtue and stifle our souls. To face that deeper corruption is a responsibility of life, and to be freed from it is a blessing of life.

9.3

Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those things that Nature wills. For such as it is to be young and to grow old, and to increase and to reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and gray hairs, and to beget and to be pregnant and to bring forth, and all the other natural operations that the seasons of your life bring, such also is dissolution.

This, then, is consistent with the character of a reflecting man—to be neither careless nor impatient nor contemptuous with respect to death, but to wait for it as one of the operations of Nature. As you now wait for the time when the child shall come out of your wife's womb, so be ready for the time when your soul shall fall out of this envelope.

But if you require also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach your heart, you will be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which you are going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom your soul will no longer be mingled.

For it is no way right to be offended with men, but it is your duty to care for them and to bear with them gently; and yet to remember that your departure will not be from men who have the same principles as yourself.

For this is the only thing, if there be any, that could draw us the contrary way and attach us to life—to be permitted to live with those who have the same principles as ourselves. But now you see how great is the trouble arising from the discordance of those who live together, so that you may say, “Come quick, O death, lest perchance I, too, should forget myself.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.3 (tr Long)

Stoicism reminds me to always carefully examine my own thinking, to be aware of the habits that influence how I act, to reflect upon the meaning of what I am feeling. If I am to understand that my happiness will proceed not merely from my circumstances, but from my estimation of circumstances, such introspection is absolutely essential.

The way of the world encourages me to constantly direct my attention outward, at what I can win and acquire out there, but Stoicism is hardly a philosophy that follows the way of the world. The success I am told I must achieve is not the contentment I need.

And when I look inward, I will sometimes come across powerful assumptions I may not even have been entirely aware of, misleading beliefs that hold far more power over me than I am willing to admit.

An illusion I have carried with me for some time, and that I must regularly put in its place, is a desire to go back to a past stage of my life, to do it over again, or to jump ahead to a later stage in life, to move along to a better place. When I was younger, I sometimes wanted to be older, and now that I am older, I sometimes want to be younger. All of it arises from a sense that something was wasted, or that something remains to be done.

This will fill me with feelings of doubt, of regret, of anxiety, of resentment. The way I can overcome this is to remember that where I am right now, in whatever situation I find myself, is exactly where I am supposed to be right now. I must live each stage of my life, however long or short it may be, for its own sake, joyfully accepting that it is beautiful and fitting. To regret the past, or worry for the future, is to foolishly neglect what should be done at this very moment.

Each season of the year, and each age of man, has its rightful place, no one better or worse than the other. This is especially true of facing death, that monstrous beast of all anxieties, that final point where there can be no more clutching at the desperate chance to do it over. It doesn’t need to be done over at all, because everything that passes transforms into something new.

I don’t just need to bear this begrudgingly, but I can embrace it wholeheartedly.

If I still have my doubts, and I need a more base motivation to accept where I am, I can also see how all the things I want to hold on to are not really as pleasant as I may think they are.

I am here to love my neighbor, to help him carry his burden, and to let him know that he is not alone. But quite often my neighbor will not be thinking along the same lines. He will mock me, abuse me, or reject me. Let me do right by him, while also realizing that he will often not do right by me. That is hardly something I should be afraid of leaving behind, now is it?

Each season of the year has its own purpose, and should be appreciated for its own sake, though that does not mean I won’t be happy to leave behind the biting cold of winter, or the scorching heat of summer.

9.4

He who does wrong does wrong against himself.

He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.4 (tr Long)

When I was a child, one of the kindly teachers tried to tell me that bullies only treated others poorly out of anger and jealously. When I was a young man, a friend tried to explain that the girl who had lied and cheated was the one who lost the most. Through the years that followed, I would see the hypocrisy, the greed, and the vanity, and I would try to remind myself what my uncle had always said: “They already have their reward.”

And quite often, I couldn’t believe these things, and I suspect there were two reasons for this. First, those people may have been living poorly, but they seemed to come across as so strong and confident. Second, my own losses seemed so great, and I could hardly imagine that the offenders could be in a worse state. It took a more serious commitment to Stoic living to see where my errors lay.

First, what a man wants to show to others may itself be a game of deception. I knew this because I would catch myself doing it all the time, trying to look brilliant on the outside, while feeling like I was rotting on the inside. It is quite easy to both lie to others and to oneself.

Second, my own losses only seemed so great because I was seeking the wrong source of contentment. If I thought that gratification, and money, and popularity were the best things, of course I would bemoan their absence. I didn’t see that those who were taking these things from me were throwing away something far more valuable.

If someone pushed me around, or stole my possessions, or laughed at me, I would be losing something in the circumstances around me. But the fellow who did the pushing, or the stealing, or the laughing was losing something of the character within him. Who was really in the worse state, the one who was denied what was external to him, or the one who rejected the very dignity that was internal to him?

I may have a preference to feel comfort, or be wealthy, or be respected, but whether you give me those things or not, I can still choose to live with virtue. Yet someone who thinks and acts out of vice has already damaged his very happiness, because he does not follow his nature as human, a creature made to know the truth and love the good.

People who are abusers may not quite understand how they have gone wrong, but the absence of living well means that they are still consumed by misery. Notice how they reach out, this way and that, to try to fill the emptiness. I should meet them with compassion, not with hatred.

9.5

He often acts unjustly who does not do a certain thing; not only he who does a certain thing.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.5 (tr Long)

I would sometimes complain about having to go to Catholic Mass when I was young, having convinced myself, as young people will often do, that there were surely far more important things to do in life than seeking God.

But even back then there were parts of the Mass that would move me deeply, though I tried stubbornly and desperately to be bored. One of these was the Confiteor, a confession of sins:

I confess to almighty God

and to you, my brothers and sisters,

that I have greatly sinned,

in my thoughts and in my words,

in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,

through my fault, through my fault,

through my most grievous fault;

therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,

all the Angels and Saints,

and you, my brothers and sisters,

to pray for me to the Lord our God.

I couldn’t help but see that I had done wrong, and that this needed to be made right. But I further realized that, in this version I had grown up with, the prayer specifically pointed out that my faults were not only in what I had done, but also in what I had left undone. I later learned of this as the distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission.

That will still cut me to the bone, because I am all too aware how my own act of ignoring what is good has done as much harm as pursuing what is evil. If I turn aside from an injustice, I also share in responsibility with the one who performed the injustice.

Apparently Edmund Burke never said it, but that doesn’t make it any less true:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Apparently Dietrich Bonhoeffer never said it, but that doesn’t make it any less true:

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

Looking the other way doesn’t make it go away.

9.6

Your present opinion founded on understanding, and your present conduct directed to social good, and your present disposition of contentment with everything that happens—that is enough.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.6 (tr Long)

It only takes a little to be happy. The Stoics understand this, the Epicureans understand this, and all lovers of wisdom understand this. A “little” here is not meant in the sense of something insignificant or inferior, but in the sense of something simple and pure. A little may be small in quantity, even as it can be great in quality. Happiness does not require much, though it fulfills everything.

What is this little that I require? The world may suggest something very different, lengthy lists and complex formulas for finding contentment, which usually reduce to acquiring and retaining my hold over this or that set of circumstances. I must have wealth, security, luxury, influence, health, and long life. I must have friends who gratify me and children who make me proud. I must arrange the world in the best possible way, and then I will supposedly be happy.

It’s much simpler than all that. It comes only from the attitude within me, not from the lay of the land around me. It requires right thinking, right action, and right acceptance. Let me know what is true, do what is good, and gladly welcome whatever else the world will bring my way. No more is necessary, for any and all other benefits in life flow from holding to such principles.

Notice that Marcus Aurelius does not merely say that I should settle for any sort of opinion, or conduct, or disposition. That is the way of the lazy relativist, who affirms everything but commits to nothing. No, my judgments should be in conformity to Nature, my deeds should be in harmony with Nature, and my disposition should respect all aspects of Nature. I am called to rule myself well in what I think and do, and to receive well whatever else is done to me. Who I am is thereby complete within the whole.

Nor should my attention be directed toward what is obscure and distant, or what has been and what might be. I suspect this is why Marcus Aurelius speaks of what is present, to be done at this place and at this moment. Life is actual, not hypothetical. I ought to see myself as measured by my character, right here and now, looking to nothing else.

The medieval principle of Ockham’s Razor suggests that we should never make anything more complex than it has to be, that the simplest solution is usually the best. This can apply just as readily to the humble practice of daily living as it can to grand philosophical and scientific theories. The good life will cut away the fat, and shave away what is extraneous.

The Stoics disagree with the Epicureans on many points, but surely the Stoics can agree with these words of the Epicurean poet and philosopher Lucretius:

Man’s greatest wealth is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

9.7

Wipe out imagination; check desire; extinguish appetite; keep the ruling faculty in its own power.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.7 (tr Long)

Stoic thinking will often go against the trends of our age, or of any age, and this is yet another one of those passages that can elicit a negative reaction from readers. It seems to be saying that feelings, and expression, and longing are terrible things that must be destroyed. This makes the Stoic seem like quite the heartless grinch.

I completely understand such a response, because I also don’t like to be told that my feelings don’t matter.

It isn’t that they don’t matter, however, but rather about how they should matter. It can take me a while to realize that only my judgments can allow me to make my feelings have purpose. Just as the body must be guided by the senses, so passion must be guided by conscience.

While the language in the passage is indeed rather blunt and forceful, I suspect the bigger problem is that we don’t like to think that our emotions should be ruled. We often start with passion, and then employ reason in order to feel good. The Stoic rather suggests that we start with reason, and then direct our passions in order to do good.

Once again, Stoicism isn’t saying that we are not creatures of feeling, or that we shouldn’t be doing any feeling. The passions are an essential aspect of our nature, but they are not the only aspect of our nature, and they are not the highest aspect of our nature. A feeling can only have value when it is first understood, and so what is good or bad in life requires passion to be guided by reason.

The language is firm because the commitment must be firm. Take charge. When it comes to things within my power, it will be so if I only so decide.

Wiping out imagination is not about stifling my creativity, but about not letting myself be ruled by appearances. Are the images running away with me? Rein the appearances back in. While I can let them speak for themselves, I shouldn’t let them speak for me.

Checking desire is not about smothering my feelings, but about moderating my longing. Are my desires telling me what to do? Turn that around. I should be telling them what to do.

Extinguishing appetite is not about denying my wants, but about knowing what I should choose to want. Are my circumstances determining my actions? Stop being a slave to conditions. I will make decisions about what happens, not letting what happens make my decisions.

It is reason that allows me to control myself, to be my own master, because only this power of awareness can distinguish true from false, and right from wrong. This does not restrict or oppress me, but is instead the very source of my liberty and contentment.

9.8

Among the animals that have not reason one life is distributed; but among reasonable animals one intelligent soul is distributed.

 Just as there is one earth of all things that are of an earthly nature, so we see by one light, and breathe one air, all of us that have the faculty of vision and all that have life.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.8 (tr Long)

An academic I once met argued that a great weakness of the Meditations is how Marcus Aurelius constantly repeats himself. Now we all have our preferences on writing that speaks to us, and I find rather that the way the Meditations will circle back to a set of common themes is of great assistance to me.

I can’t speak for what Marcus Aurelius intended, but for me it has always come across as a work immediately grounded in daily practice, not just an expression of abstract theory. I approach each passage as an observation and insight about a specific aspect of living, offering specific tools to face the obstacles that come my way.

Consequently, similar themes will return over and over whenever certain problems arise over and over. The repetition actually helps to ground my habits, reminds me of what I have forgotten, and strengthens my resolve on each new day.

Am I distressed? I recall that no circumstance can truly harm me. Am I tempted by wealth, or fame, or glory? I recall that it is all a passing vanity. Do I fear death? I recall that change and transformation are at the heart of Nature. Am I angry with my neighbor? I recall that we are made to be together, not to be separated.

Stoicism always insists on stressing unity over division, the way things are joined instead of fractured, and I do need to hear this again and again when I feel isolated from the world around me. As the very word should suggest, the Universe is one, in that all things that exist share in the same being. Stoic physics often expresses various forms of monism and pantheism, which I can apply in practice to understand that nothing ever is outside of everything that is.

All beings share and participate in one being. Call something an aspect, a part, an emanation, or an effect, but it is still within the whole. This is then true down the line for all kinds of creatures. All material objects share and participate in one matter. All living things share and participate in one life. All minds share and participate in one mind.

When I am thinking, I am not thinking on my own. My reason proceeds from Universal Reason, and it works together with all other reason. Just as all of us are living on the same earth, and breathing the same air, and seeing by the same light, we are all understanding together.

This may sound quite abstract and mysterious, but it doesn’t need to be. It means I am not alone, whatever may happen, or however I may feel. I believe this is something that warrants being repeated.

9.9.1

All things that participate in anything that is common to them all, move towards that which is of the same kind with themselves. Everything that is earthy turns towards the earth, everything that is liquid flows together, and everything that is of an aerial kind does the same, so that they require something to keep them asunder, and the application of force.

Fire indeed moves upwards on account of the elemental fire, but it is so ready to be kindled together with all the fire that is here, that even every substance which is somewhat dry is easily ignited, because there is less mingled with it of that which is a hindrance to ignition.

Accordingly, then, everything also that participates in the common intelligent nature moves in like manner towards that which is of the same kind with itself, or moves even more. For so much as it is superior in comparison with all other things, in the same degree also is it more ready to mingle with and to be fused with that which is akin to it.

Accordingly among animals devoid of reason we find swarms of bees, and herds of cattle, and the nurture of young birds, and in a manner, loves between them; for even in animals there are souls, and that power that brings them together is seen to exert itself in a superior degree, and in such a way as never has been observed in plants, nor in stones, nor in trees.

But in rational animals there are political communities and friendships, and families and meetings of people; and in wars, treaties and armistices. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.9 (tr Long)

I think here of the expression, “like knows like”. My great-grandmother would say that “birds of a feather will flock together”, and I seem to recall a little song that went along with the phrase, though I have sadly forgotten the other words.

Now we may be tempted to put down the physics of the Ancients as primitive and crude, convinced that we are far smarter when it comes to explaining how the world works. We forget, however, that what we know only builds upon what they knew, and I always seek to find the common truths from different times and traditions.

So yes, while it seems to make sense to say that heavy things fall together and light things rise together, is it not true also that temperature will move from hot to cold, or that air flows from a higher pressure to a lower pressure? Doesn’t magnetism involve like poles repelling one another, and opposite poles attracting one another? Were the Ancients too ignorant to see this?

I would suggest that the principle Marcus Aurelius is trying to describe here isn’t only about things coming to rest together. Rather, it is saying that things that share in the same nature will always act for the same purpose and in the same way. Whatever the form of that action, whether it is about gravity, or heat, or gasses, or electromagnetism, the same things will behave “like” one another.

In other words, it doesn’t necessarily mean things of the same nature are all going to the same place, but that they are all doing the very same sort of thing. They will continue to do so, together, until something else stands in their way.

We may not speak in terms of the Classical Four Elements anymore, but the Ancients did understand these as states of matter, and change as a result of the interaction between these states of matter, out of the balance between opposites. Earth, water, air, and fire will behave according to their nature, according to what they are, hindered only by a contrary force.

This principle of nature, where being disposed in a certain way is what joins things, is to be found in living things as well. As a child I was fascinated that dogs seemed to prefer being together, but cats seemed to prefer being apart. They were quite different from one another, but quite alike among themselves. A dozen dogs in the same room and a dozen cats in the same room will act very differently; I can only speculate about all of them in the same room.

And this is also true of rational life. However fully they may or may not choose to reflect upon it, all men seek happiness, and they pursue their happiness through their own understanding of what is good for them. So it is that we form associations with one another, not merely by a physical force, or by an instinct, but out of our own choices. We may have friends, for example, who are very different from us in some ways, but what we have in common is a shared end or goal.

Even when we battle among ourselves, out of a flawed conviction that our respective goods are in conflict, we can still find ourselves drawn to making peace, to resolving differences, to finding a common way.

Boulders will roll downhill, and birds will flock together, and men will try to build a community. Each of these tendencies follows from a likeness of nature, from the lesser to the greater, from the more determined to the more free, from the unconscious to the conscious.

9.9.2

. . . But in the things that are still superior, even though they are separated from one another, unity in a manner exists, as in the stars. Thus the ascent to the higher degree is able to produce a sympathy even in things that are separated.

See, then, what now takes place: for only intelligent animals have now forgotten this mutual desire and inclination, and in them alone the property of flowing together is not seen.

But still, though men strive to avoid this union, they are caught and held by it, for their nature is too strong for them; and you will see what I say, if you only observe.

Sooner, then, will one find anything earthy that comes in contact with no earthy thing, than a man altogether separated from other men.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.9 (tr Long)

All things are made for one another, and within this, things that are made according to the same nature share in the same particular purpose within the whole. Beings that are like one another are drawn together, as water gathers in a pool, as birds travel in flocks, as people build relationships of cooperation.

And as the nature of the creature is more complete and self-sufficient, the nature of this unity is more perfect. The water flows without awareness, the bird flies with instinct, but the man chooses by deliberate reason. The bonds between elements are great, the bonds between beasts even greater, but the bonds between men greater still.

The richer the nature, the deeper the union is between the things that share in that nature. The deeper the union between them, the harder it will be to separate them. Force them apart, and they are still tied to the same end.

Then why is it that everything else in Nature seems to work in harmony, but men so often seem to be in conflict? They cast aside, they fight, and they destroy. Where there should be friendship, we find hatred, deceit, and violence. The unity that should be most present of all seems to be most lacking.

Marcus Aurelius offer two insights about this puzzling fact.

First, this happens with rational animals precisely because they are rational, because they act not by determination, but by judgments and choices. If they are free to act according to the good, they are also free to act contrary to the good. In this sense, man’s greatest strength, the power to move himself of his own accord, is also his greatest weakness.

The water does not forget that it is water, and the bird does not forget that it is a bird, but a man can certainly forget that he is a man, since he alone is able to turn his attention where he wills, both for his benefit and his harm.

Second, do not be deceived by the outward appearance that a man has somehow “lost” his nature. He has not lost it, but has overlooked or ignored it. He may turn from it, curse himself and others, confuse what is right with what is wrong, and deny his place within the order of things. Yet as much as he does so, he still remains himself, and he is still drawn to the good, however confused he may become. Notice that when people pursue what is false, they still do so under the illusion that it is truth.

Whether I know it or not, and whether I choose to cooperate with it or struggle against it, I am going to play my part within the whole. Let me work to embrace it so I may be happy, instead of running away and being miserable. Let me help others to see what they are, so that we can find contentment together.

We are made to love one another. Underneath the hatred you will still find the desperate need to love. Denying it does not make it go away.

9.10

Both man and God and the Universe produce fruit; at the proper seasons each produces it.

But if usage has especially fixed these terms to the vine and like things, this is nothing. Reason produces fruit both for all and for itself, and there are produced from it other things of the same kind as reason itself.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.10 (tr Long)

When I am worried if I am living well, I will ask myself what I have achieved, and in asking what I have achieved, I will then be tempted to consider what I have acquired for myself, how fully I control my circumstances, and whether or not I have increased in influence. I will be drawn to measuring myself only by the utility of the consequences, while neglecting the character within the action.

This would be as if I merely judged a vine by how much profit I can make from selling the grapes, or a work of art by how much praise it receives, or a friend by how much he amuses me. Fruits are more than things to be cultivated, harvested, or eaten, just as any of the goods in life are more than things to be bought, sold, or consumed.

All things bear fruit by simply expressing, fulfilling, and perfecting their own natures, and by doing so also assisting other things to express, fulfill, and perfect their own natures. The benefit lies in them authentically being themselves, in harmony with everything else.

Or as an old hippie friend of mine used to say, “Commit to love, and pass it on.”

I may want to do what is right, but then I become discouraged when I don’t see certain tangible results. I may have been honest, but I then found myself deceived. I may have been compassionate, but was only met with contempt. I may have given, but others gave nothing back. I may have struggled mightily, but no one noticed.

I’m discouraged because I’m not really recognizing the fruits of my actions; I am failing to understand what it means to achieve. The benefit for me is only in how I increase my own virtue, and the benefit I can offer others is only in how I encourage them to increase their own virtue.

There is the happiness. I need not want any other reward beyond that, as long as I have done what I should do, content that I may not win riches, or fame, or gratification.

Frustrated with the obstacles of life, I often don’t see the small but powerful ways my actions can make me better, and can help others to be better. I overlook them precisely because they are humble, and because they are subtle.

The big events of life were not the school graduation, or the lucrative job offer, or making the perfect business deal, or appearing on the front page of the newspaper. No, they were what William Wordsworth called

. . .that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love.

Or as George MacDonald put it,

If instead of a gem, or even of a flower, we could cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving, as the angels, I suppose, must give.

These are the real fruits of the good life. God produces them by passing Himself on to us. Nature produces them by passing them from one thing to the next. We produce them by passing them to one another.

9.11

If you are able, correct by teaching those who do wrong; but if you cannot, remember that indulgence is given to you for this purpose.

And the gods, too, are indulgent to such persons; and for some purposes they even help them to get health, wealth, reputation; so kind they are. And it is in your power also; or say, who hinders you?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.11 (tr Long)

I shudder when I think of all the times I was convinced another had done me wrong, and then in my righteous attempts to set him right, I only committed a wrong myself. How sad that my effort at correcting a perceived offense resulted only in compounding the offense, that I managed to make a bad thing even worse.

I can rule and change myself, but I cannot rule and change another man; only he can do that for himself. I can certainly inspire him, advise him, or guide him by example, but he will be the one who decides how he will live.

If I restrain him by force, punish him by deprivation, or intimidate him with sanctions, I may hinder his actions, but he will be the one who decides if he alters his mind and his will.

I should be careful that in my zeal for retribution, I do not end up becoming the more brutal man. I can hardly expect to teach respect when I fail to practice it.

And if he does not listen to me? Then I can recognize that he does wrong, while also choosing to treat him right. I can reject the thinking, without rejecting the one who thinks. I can condemn the act, and continue to love the person.

Whenever I am faced with vice that is beyond my own power, the virtue within my power calls me to tolerance. Once I have encouraged another in every way I can, I must still allow him his own way. I will bear with him, I will support him, I will give completely of myself to help him make himself better, but I cannot carry him if he refuses to be carried.

I do not think of tolerance as a permissive relativism, where the real difference between right and wrong is confused.

I do not think of tolerance as a smug condescension, where one simply looks down upon others as ignorant fools.

I do not think of tolerance as a begrudging hardness, where offenses are only suffered with gritted teeth.

No, tolerance is patience, it is a conviction, it is a true expression of compassion. Providence itself practices tolerance, because it permits us to exercise our freedom, even while never turning away from us, or refusing assistance to us.

I can hardly go wrong by mirroring the wisdom and love of Providence.

9.12

Labor not as one who is wretched, nor yet as one who would be pitied or admired; but direct your will to one thing only—to put yourself in motion and to check yourself, as the social reason requires.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.12 (tr Long)

Observe how often “work” is a dirty word. There is a perfectly good reason for this, if we only consider it as something that someone else wants us to do, or as a means to making money and acquiring status, or as a burden instead of a blessing.

Many of us will suffer through all the working we need to do in life, only so that we can rush through a little bit of the playing we want to do in life, and it rarely occurs to us that the two could go hand in hand.

This will happen when we reduce a person to a producer of something that can be bought and sold, one commodity used to make other commodities, instead of seeing a person as a creature simply made to live well, and thereby to be happy. Work is not restricted to this or that career, but should rightly be the work of being human.

And while we like to complain and be miserable about our jobs, even as we make the value of our lives dependent on the money and reputation that go with a certain profession, I really do not need to play along with that game. A good life requires very little in the way of externals, far less than we might think, and all the rest I am complaining about involves the acquisition of vanities.

No, the work of the good life asks us only to rule ourselves, in cooperation with others. Even if we were made slaves in body, like Epictetus, we do not need to be slaves in soul, and even if another dedicates himself to doing me wrong, it is only my job to do him right.

Work will be a joy, not a hardship, when it is the act of living itself, not something I think I need to do in order to live.

My work is to be decent and kind, not to be rich and important. It starts and stops not by a time clock, but by the guidance of virtue.

Many years ago, while going home on the subway, a stranger looked over at me and grumbled, “Tough day at work?”

“It never ends, does it?” I replied.

“Tell me about it! So you take your job home with you too, huh?”

I smiled. “Can’t be helped if I want it done right.”

He nodded knowingly, even as he had no idea that we were talking about two completely different things.

9.13

Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.13 (tr Long)

I think it was somewhere around the age of seven or eight that all of us at school started thinking in terms of “getting into trouble”. While we may have wanted to do certain things, like play hide-and-go-seek in the school boiler room, or chew bubble gum during class, we were now worried about getting caught, and about all the unpleasant consequences that went with that. A scolding from the teacher was bearable, but the call home to the parents most certainly was not.

And since then, I’ve had this nagging habit of assuming that trouble is something that happens to me. I will catch myself judging an action by the possible rewards or punishments, by whether I will or will not be seen, by what others will think and do, and it is my disordered attitude that is, in fact, the real source of trouble.

Events are simply things that occur, with a meaning and a purpose for themselves, but for me they will only become good or bad by the way I consider them and make use of them. The benefit or the harm, the contentment or the trouble, follow entirely from my estimation. Give me any circumstance, and I can employ it to improve or to harm my character; these things are given to me as equal, until I tip the balance.

This is a classic principle of Stoicism, easy to say, but difficult to understand, and even more difficult to live in practice. I’m so accustomed to thinking I need to avoid problems that I look only to the situation around me. I forget that I don’t need to “get out” of trouble at all, but I rather need to get the trouble out of me.

To strengthen the right way of thinking, in the face of everything that tells me otherwise, is a path to accountability and freedom. As we all grew older, the stakes got higher, but the game remained the same. Even if it was now about losing that lucrative job instead of just getting sent to the principal’s office, we were still letting ourselves be pushed around by everything external, forgetting to nourish first the virtue that is internal.

Many people like to tell us to “grow up”, and by this they usually mean following the rules and doing what we are told. Yet I hardly think of this as maturity at all, since it dodges responsibility on every level. Maturity is the building of character, not of conformity.

And notice that Marcus Aurelius isn’t appealing to some grand plan of life here, from the cradle to the grave, where all the conditions are lined up as I might prefer them. No, he speaks of today, of the here and now, of knowing that I am my own master at this moment.

Let all the rest, past, present, or future, be what it will be, and let me immediately choose to be the best man that I can be. This is a life without trouble.

9.14

All things are the same, familiar in experience, and ephemeral in time, and worthless in the matter.

Everything now is just as it was in the time of those whom we have buried.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.14 (tr Long)

They say that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and I will sometimes find myself frustrated with an expression like that. Well, which is it? The pedantry of the academic will say very much about very little, and the platitudes of the New Age guru will say very little about very much, but I feel I am no closer to understanding whether everything is constant, or everything is variable.

If everything comes and goes, is born and then dies, how is everything also lasting?

I only get frustrated when I don’t want to clearly distinguish, when I make it more complex or simpler than it has to be.

As is so often the case, an analogy can help me. The players will change, but it is still the same play. There will be different actors behind the mask, but they are all, in their own ways, performing the very same roles.

The particulars change. We are all different individuals, in different places, facing different situations. Each one passes on into another.

The universal remains unchanging. All things express the same substance, in the same Universe, and repeat the same patterns. All are only aspects of the one and the same.

My wife will make a new pot of Hungarian goulash, which will be consumed very quickly, but it follows the very same recipe made by my great-grandmother, and probably even long before that. This is how things are both ephemeral and familiar.

So Heraclitus was in a sense right, that you can’t step in the same river twice, and Parmenides was also in a sense right, that being is one, change only an illusion. It all depends on whether we are looking at it from the bottom up, or from the top down, at the parts or at the whole.

In daily practice, when I feel overwhelmed by how quickly everything seems different, I can remember that down beneath it all, it is still the same as it ever was. Even as the sun rises and sets, there is nothing new under it; in an ever-unfolding Universe, every variation or combination has already been, and it will be again.

When I am tossed about, let me find strength and comfort in what is constant and one, while letting go of what is passing and many.

9.15

Things stand outside of us, themselves by themselves, neither knowing anything of themselves, nor expressing any judgment.

What is it, then, that does judge about them? The ruling faculty.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.15 (tr Long)

I have always had the odd personal trait, for as long as I can remember, of being deeply affected by the influence of memory, and by the powerful emotions that memory can trigger. This has sometimes helped me to be more compassionate, but it has more often provided me with occasions to torture myself.

It is fitting, therefore, that Stoicism, so directed toward the managing of strong impressions, has been such an aid and comfort for me.

Years ago, I foolishly gave my affections to someone who considered me disposable, and I carelessly started living in a way that brought me only grief. When everything seemed to crash down around me, I found that certain places and things felt like kryptonite to me, exposing memories that I was not equipped to face. I would avoid them, thinking that they were somehow the cause of my suffering.

There was one spot, a grubby student flophouse, that seemed to have a particular hold on me, because of the recollections it brought forth. I would go out of my way not to walk down that street, even if it meant taking a lengthy detour. Out of sight, I thought, out of mind.

One day, a friend was driving me home, and he ran into heavy traffic on the main road. Looking for a shortcut, he pulled off on a side street, and I was suddenly horrified to realize that we were going to drive by that old house. I broke out in an overwhelming panic, shaking and stuttering, all because of a house.

I only have to look back at that moment to understand what I had done to myself. It was just a building, in a certain location, where certain things had once happened. That house had no thoughts or intentions about me, and contained within itself no good or evil for me whatsoever.

Everything that I violently felt, and everything that was racing through my head, proceeded only from my own judgment. It meant something to me because I had chosen to give it that meaning; it had done nothing at all, as I had done it all to myself.

The mind and the emotions move in subtle and mysterious ways, and they are hardly altered with a simple flick of a switch. Yet it was after that moment that I began to realize how I had been building up unhealthy habits of thinking, like some thick residue. It was going to be up to me to change my estimation, however much time or commitment it would take.

The circumstances didn’t make me. I made myself out of the circumstances.

9.16

Not in passivity but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity but in activity.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.16 (tr Long)

I am a creature made not only to act, but also to act from my own awareness and choice. I am given not only life, but also a life of reason and will. How strange that I still so often choose to define myself by the things that happen to me, not by the things that I do.

I am too accustomed to thinking that a good life is measured by the environment I live in, whether it be how much money I might have, or the home I live in, or those who treat me as a friend.

As a result, I will sit back comfortably when I gain such things, but I will become anxious and despondent when I lose them. So instead of leading myself, I am letting myself be led, dependent upon what is quite often beyond my ability to control.

There is no shame at all in wanting such things and in enjoying their presence. The danger, however, lies in confusing a preference with a necessity, and in mistaking my circumstances for my character. There are many things that will passively come and go in this life, within my choice to like or dislike, though they should always be quite subservient to the virtue I practice actively.

I may still be convinced, however, that the conveniences and luxuries I have, or that I think I should have, are things that I have earned, or things that I deserve; after all, they seem to be the consequence of my own work and effort, the fruits of my labors. Notice how often people are so proud of their honors and possessions, assuming that these prizes on the outside reflect an excellence on the inside.

Yet this isn’t nearly so much the case as I would like to think. Whatever I may have done, for better or for worse, follows from my own actions, while whatever others may choose to give to me, for better or for worse, follows from their actions. The prestige of the degree from a fancy school? The bountiful earnings from a lucrative career? The pleasures of being honored and respected by all the right people? Some of it is just the result of good fortune, and most of the rest is just the result of someone else’s judgment.

If I am still in doubt that these benefits are not completely my own, let me only recognize how easily they can be taken away. What seems so securely within my power is hardly mine at all.

What is still completely mine, whatever the world offers me, is the dignity of my own thoughts and deeds. I need only master myself, and let the rest be what it may, focusing sharply on the merit of how I act, regardless of how I am acted upon.

The measure of a man is what he gives, not what he receives. It is a genuine responsibility for himself.

9.17

For the stone that has been thrown up it is no evil to come down, nor indeed any good to have been carried up.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.17 (tr Long)

All beings in Nature will act according to purpose, as aspects of Providence giving order and fulfillment to everything. Yet here we are, looking at this or that event, and saying that it is somehow “good” or “bad” for it to have happened, relative only to our own preferences.

We see only the parts, neglecting how the parts all work together. We consider only what is immediate, ignoring what is ultimate. We assume that our own desires should determine what is of benefit or of harm, failing to understand how our own moral worth exists within the harmony of the whole.

I suspect that our struggle to think beyond these confines is actually one of the ways we come to participate in unity. 

I should never merely judge any circumstance by how convenient or inconvenient, pleasant or unpleasant it might be to me. It is what it is, in and of itself, and it is so for a reason. What it then is to me, my own relationship to a situation, must go beyond how it may feel, to how it may help me or hinder me in acting with virtue. It is good or bad for me, therefore, because of what I choose to do with it: will I use it to improve or diminish my own nature?

One man may toss aside a rock that is on his lawn, and he may say that this is a good thing. Another man may be struck by the rock, and he may say that this is a bad thing.

For the rock, of course, it is neither, and even for both of the men it may be different than it at first appears. For the one, it might be a reflection of his thoughtlessness, in which case he has done wrong. For the other, it might be an opportunity for forgiveness, in which case he has done right.

How often have I called something good or bad, only to learn that my own estimation could transform it into something else? The intoxication of love or the agony of a broken heart would become what I made of them. The comfort of possessions or the longing of poverty would reveal different paths. The glory of praise or the shame of ridicule would teach me about genuine merit.

Just because it goes up, does not mean it is better. Just because it goes down, does not mean it is worse. One piece of fortune is not a blessing, and another is not a curse. In each is the potential for my own growth or stagnation.

It is common to ask, quite understandably, why bad things happen to good people, and why good things happen to bad people. My own answer, however, is that neither is actually true at all. Things happen, good people do good, and bad people do bad. When another does bad, even that can be turned into something good.

9.18

Penetrate inwards into men's leading principles, and you will see what judges you are afraid of, and what kind of judges they are of themselves.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.18 (tr Long)

Most of the grief I have brought upon myself was the result of my own poor judgment of character. I have been enamored of good looks, mesmerized by class and style, impressed by bookish learning, and amused by wit and charm. As it turns out, I wasn’t judging by character at all.

I can perform a little thought experiment on myself, asking whether what I admire is about who a person truly is on the inside, as opposed to how they choose to appear on the outside. I will still surprise myself by how shallow and gullible I can be.

What am I really so taken in by? Why am I seeking the blessings and approval of certain sorts of people? Am I not actually allowing myself to be intimated by impressions?

Look beneath the surface. Words should match actions. Actions should proceed from convictions. Convictions should be built upon right principles. It only takes an observant attitude and a bit of patience to discern who loves the good, and who loves seeming good. If I pay attention, I will begin to learn about what people truly care about, what informs their judgments, and what motivates their deeds.

The user, the player, and the hypocrite will reveal themselves to me simply by they way they choose to live in the simplest matters; it doesn’t even take some earth-shattering situation to make this clear. I can strip away the trappings to apprehend the real properties.

Informed in this manner, I no longer need to be confused about who I should trust and revere.

If a man’s judgment shows itself to be sound, and he puts his money where his mouth is, I have found someone worthy of considering a friend. He can be an example and an encouragement for me; I, in turn, can be confident that it is right to support him in his endeavors.

If, however, I see that his priorities are misguided, and he talks the talk without walking the walk, I am well advised to view his decisions with suspicion. I owe him the decency, compassion, and concern I owe all my fellows, but I do not need to respect his values. I am called to love him, but I am not called to follow him.

Accordingly I do not need to be influenced by how he judges me, since he is sadly incapable of judging himself. Observe how many people try to stand over us, manipulate our thinking, and increase their importance in our eyes. They operate through fear and power, and by doing so have already disqualified themselves from being worthy of our esteem.

9.19

All things are changing: and you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole Universe too.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.19 (tr Long)

There are times when I feel like I am hearing the same lesson once to often, though I should hardly be frustrated if I admire its truth, and maybe I am stubbornly uncomfortable with the repetition because I have not yet retained it rightly. Marcus Aurelius on the power of change is precisely one of these lessons.

I can understand that everything is subject to change, and that I should resist the temptation to keep everything the same. Yet perhaps I am not applying this insight deeply enough.

I may still be thinking that the default position for anything is to be at rest, and that activity and motion are then somehow added to this static state. It is as if I were first imagining myself sitting there frozen in time, and only later engaged in this or that exercise, like a writer giving life to his character, or an artist animating a cartoon. In other words, though I know I am changing, I impose that change over something that I perceive first as stationary and constant.

I know, that makes your head hurt a bit, but bear with me. I mean that I am not first a man, who changes after that fact, but that my being a man can only be expressed through actions, and cannot exist independently from always being transformed. Nothing is ever fixed at one moment, but is part of a process, necessarily in flux.

To have it any other way would be like trying to stop time itself. I may think of a snapshot, of a photograph, for example, as something that captures a moment forever, yet it too is changing, as is anyone and everything around it.

I learned that once when I opened up my passport after a few years, and then saw that the picture had almost completely faded, or at another time when I looked into a dusty box of drawings I had made as a child, only to find that the paper had become yellow and brittle.

Even my memories, which I think of as being so immovable, will be altered by my experience and perspective. Existence does not stutter along in stops and starts, in a sequence of isolated frames. It passes in a continuous flow.

I am not a creature who changes, but, in a sense, a creature who is change; this is not a further quality, but within my essence itself. There is no “me” without it.

This is why generation and destruction, coming to be and passing away, are not to be feared as something strange or threatening. They are part of my very nature, within the whole of Nature. I should never fear them, but gladly embrace them.

9.20

It is your duty to leave another man's wrongful act there where it is.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.20 (tr Long)

This is a lesson I need to relearn every day, sometimes many times a day. In the heat of the moment I can forget it completely, because few impressions tug as powerfully as the kneejerk reaction to want to respond in kind.

It is unpleasant enough to feel wronged, though I still find myself tempted to throw more fuel on the fire, to escalate the conflict. How many times might a situation have been quite bearable, yet I have made it so much harder to face because of my own stubborn refusal to simply let something be?

Over time I have come to expect that people will more often than not act poorly, not because I have some dark or pessimistic view of the world, but because I know from my own experience that it is far easier to act without thought and concern than it is to make an effort to be responsible and caring. To accept this fact is the beginning of my ability to be forgiving instead of resentful, to make it right instead of compounding the wrong. I know how often I will fail, so I can hardly hold it against another.

This will not excuse an evil, or wish it out of existence, but it will put it in its place, keeping it from festering and spreading. I can’t put a stop to what others may think and do, but I can certainly put a stop to what I may think or do. To face a vice with a virtue is to stop it in its tracks, and to transform it into something helpful instead of harmful.

One of my many odd interests in college was reading old Icelandic sagas, where the slightest offense or disagreement would end up bringing ever greater grief and misfortune on the characters. If only someone, somewhere down the line, had turned away from the desire for vengeance, or even avoided some foolish blunder, all would have been well. I appreciated the principle here, but it was quite strange that it took me so much longer to embrace the practice.

I know full well that lighting a match around a gas leak, or poking a snarling dog with a stick, is not a good idea, and yet I will all too easily offend when I have been offended, seek to hurt when I have been hurt. Blame and bickering only make it worse, while rising above the fray can help to make it better.

The greatest kindnesses I have ever received were never from people helping me to smite my enemies, but from people helping me to move beyond an injustice.

To let it go is not to ignore it, or to wish it away, or to run from a response. It is actually responding with compassion, by limiting the damage and beginning to rebuild. We’ve heard it so many times, but we still don’t seem to get it: two wrongs don’t make a right, and it takes two to fight.

9.21

Termination of activity, cessation from movement and opinion, and in a sense their death, is no evil.

Turn your thoughts now to the consideration of your life, your life as a child, as a youth, your manhood, your old age, for in these also every change was a death.

Is this anything to fear? Turn your thoughts now to your life under your grandfather, then to your life under your mother, then to your life under your father; and as you find many other differences and changes and terminations, ask yourself, is this anything to fear?

In like manner, then, neither is the termination and cessation and change of your whole life a thing to be afraid of.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.21 (tr Long)

People have all sorts of ways of showing you that that they no longer care. I have found that simply ignoring a person is the most common, the easiest solution for dealing with someone who is now undesirable or inconvenient; we think that if we look away, it must never have happened.

But the most interesting brush-off I ever received came from someone I thought would never let me down. She fixed her eyes on me quite seriously, and carefully described how she had seen an old man on the subway the previous day.

“He looked just like I know you’ll be one of these days.” Her expression was one of complete horror and disgust.

I didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight I understood that this was her odd way of telling me that I was no longer interesting to her. The thought of an old version of me, perhaps sick, weak, or broken, was deeply unattractive.

As much as we might vehemently deny it, aging troubles us to the core. Perhaps we cringe at it in others because we know with such certainty that it will come to us as well. So we worship youth, thinking it expresses everything about vitality, and we turn away from old age, shunning it at as a sign of failure.

What we are forgetting is that every passing moment, at any time, is already an ending, a little death. The very fact that this sounds disturbing reveals our deeply rooted fear of transition. If it isn’t permanent, it must be no good. But every act of living is also an act of dying, of changing from one state into another.

The fact that nothing remains constant isn’t just a part of the process, it is the very definition of a process, a continual unfolding of action. This is as true of every part of Nature as it is of the whole of Nature, and it is as true at the beginning of our lives, or in the middle, as it is at the end, in that each and every change is itself a beginning, middle, and an end.

Why will we fear our deathbeds, but not a graduation from school, or a wedding, or the birth of a child? They are really no different at all. Why smile at one passage but cry at another?

Youth and growth are hardly evils, and neither are death and aging. They are necessary aspects of living. We can hardly love one of these and not the other.

9.22

Hasten to examine your own ruling faculty, and that of the Universe, and that of your neighbor.

Your own, that you may make it just; and that of the Universe, that you may remember of what you are a part; and that of your neighbor, that you may know whether he has acted ignorantly or with knowledge, and that you may also consider that his ruling faculty is akin to yours.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.22 (tr Long)

The most essential aspect of our nature, and that of all of Nature, is consciousness, the power of reason, by which all things are ordered and ruled.

If we can only attend to the understanding within ourselves, we will discover our purpose. If we can only attend to the understanding in others, we will learn how we share that purpose with them. If we can only attend to the Understanding as the power that moves everything, we will begin to glimpse the purpose of the whole.

Putting this task above all others is the key to embracing meaning and finding peace, for then our choices and actions are informed by truth. Yet this is too often the part of ourselves we neglect the most, replacing it with the pursuit of feeding our passions, accumulating wealth, and increasing our fame. Concerned so much with everything outside of us, we abandon the dignity of what is within us.

I sometimes wonder what another intelligence might think if it stumbled across our way of doing things, observing how we encourage consumption in our business, sell gratification in our advertising, or gain influence in our politics. Even I will catch myself asking, “What could they possibly be thinking?” The problem, of course, is that there isn’t necessarily much genuine thinking going on at all.

A university administrator once told me that we didn’t need students to figure out who they are, but rather to just train them in what they needed to do. I found this attitude quite dangerous, since it is impossible for there to be worthy action without wisdom, or any doing of what is good without first knowing what is good.

I should hardly believe it is hopeless, however, because I can start with myself, right at this very moment. My blinders can come off, and I can always find the wonderful ways I am able to participate with everyone and everything around me. In discovering something of my own true nature, I might even help others to discover something about their own.

To know myself, as Socrates advised, is to reveal my own virtue as my only real calling. To know others is to think with them, whether they are right or wrong, and thereby to practice respect for them. To know the Reason behind it all is to recognize that whatever happens has its place in Providence, and that no sincere effort is in vain.

Some people will give up on being human, while others will rise to the occasion. A choice is only as good as the judgment that guides it, and nothing of benefit can proceed without a total commitment to awareness.

9.23

As you yourself are a component part of a social system, so let every act of yours be a component part of social life.

Whatever act of yours then has no reference either immediately or remotely to a social end, this tears asunder your life, and does not allow it to be one, and it is of the nature of a mutiny, just as when in a popular assembly a man acting by himself stands apart from the general agreement.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.23 (tr Long)

When I first began to take an interest in Stoicism many years ago, I mistakenly assumed that it would only make me be even more alone. I was already quite awkward and uncomfortable around people, and the fact that I was now interested in an odd philosophy that went against the grain of all that was popular was hardly going to make me any new friends. So I figured that being a loner was the price I needed to pay for some peace of mind, that self-sufficiency meant coming to terms with greater isolation.

Yet quite contrary to my expectations, something very different happened. No, I didn’t gain any new friends, or suddenly become more admired, but I did begin to understand what it actually meant to be social, that it was always right and necessary to live and work with others, and I became more content to do my own part, without demanding something further in return.

It is through the power of reason that we can understand one another, and it is through such an understanding that we can choose to cooperate for the sake of our common end. I may see other people treat social relations as a means for personal gain at the expense of others, and as a place of constant competition and conflict, but I do not need to act contrary to any man. I can hardly claim to live a life with my neighbors, if I am constantly working against them.

This may seem to be asking too much, and I may think I cannot help but have enemies. I remind myself simply that because another tries to take advantage of me does not require me to take advantage of him. The Golden Rule, however we may choose to express it, does not admit of conditions or exceptions.

When we treat life as a game of manipulation, we are separating ourselves from others, not bonding with them at all, and we are thereby removing our own nature from the whole of which it is a part. I am no longer even myself when I am no longer for others. Instead of saying “ If I want it, I’ll take it from you!” I should rather say “If we both need it, I can share it with you!”

I may still feel discouraged that being social in this way isn’t making me any richer, or winning me honor, or improving my influence and position. Yet taking a properly Stoic view of things will only remind me that none of that is the point at all, that being social isn’t about gaining greater popularity or importance. To be a social creature is in what I give to others, to act well for them, and that is itself the greatest reward, the building of my own character.

I do not need to receive anything else to be happy for having treated my neighbor with justice and compassion. My actions may be small, they may be unnoticed, or they may even lower my place in the pecking order. I can smile and move on, satisfied with my contribution.

If what I am doing can help others to live well, in whatever manner, then I am also living well, and there can be no opposition here. A social creature fulfills itself by contribution, not by domination.

No man who chooses to love is ever really alone.

9.24

Quarrels of little children and their sports, and poor spirits carrying about dead bodies, such is everything; and so what is exhibited in the representation of the mansions of the dead strikes our eyes more clearly.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.24 (tr Long)

If we learn to turn our attention away from what is lesser, it can surely help us take better notice of what is greater. Things can loom large in the imagination, and unless we choose to look through them and beyond them, we will find ourselves distracted from what is good in life, by nothing more than shadows and illusions.

How important have all the glittering prizes really been? Was the fame worth the flattery? Was the pleasure worth the playing? Were the profits worth the friendships sold? Did the worldly gains outweigh the moral losses?

These are the uncomfortable questions we all eventually have to ask ourselves. If we look at ourselves honestly, we will find the answers disturbing.

A sense of perspective will make all of the difference. Look at the inside, not at the outside. Look to the whole, not to the part. Look for the ultimate, not for the proximate.

Someone once told me not to be afraid of speaking in public, and suggested I imagine my audience in their underwear. That never worked for me, because I only started laughing uncontrollably. Yet perhaps it did work after all.

I honestly don’t know what Marcus Aurelius intends by mentioning the mansions of the dead, but I think of that classical image, of the hero entering the underworld, only to encounter the shades of those passed. They are now nothing at all, and they are still concerned with what goes about in a world completely lost to them.

I am gone, but I’m worried about whether I turned off the stove. Shadows obsessed with shadows.

I think of the Egyptian pharaohs, stacking their tombs with riches. There is nothing there for them to enjoy, because they are no more. 

I think of an old abandoned Victorian house, on the path I would walk home from school. I was horrified by it, certain that it was haunted. That haunting, however, was only in my mind. People had lived there, and people had died there. It was the thought that bothered me, not the reality. What I feared did not exist at all.

They tore that old house down one day, and built a new one for the yuppies.

The supposed problems I see in my life are nothing more than the bickering of children. Growing up isn’t about being more important, but about being better. Understanding the difference is what matters.

9.25

Examine into the quality of the form of an object, and detach it altogether from its material part, and then contemplate it.

Then determine the time, the longest that a thing of this peculiar form is naturally made to endure.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.25 (tr Long)

Philosophers like to debate the distinction between form and matter, between what something is, and how it then exists in a particular way.

In theory, one can separate the two; in practice there is no such thing. My failure as an academic was largely due to my stubborn insistence that theory should never be removed from practice.

Consider any form, that of a rock, or of a tree, or of a dog, or of a man. I may think that the form is timeless and unchanging, even as the instances come and go. This leads to the philosophy of any “–ism”, that an idea comes first. This is the way most contemporary philosophy goes, beginning with an idea, and then forcing the idea into the actual world.

Yet Marcus Aurelius cuts it all off at the pass. The very form of the rock, or the tree, or the dog, or even of the man is already a passing thing, because each and every one of them, by their very identity, are things that will die, that will cease.

Yes, even the rock.

The dying is not merely a quality of what they are, it is essential to what they are. No rock, or tree, or dog, or man ever kept going forever. They all stopped, and became something else.

Even when you look at it abstractly, what it is includes the necessity of its cessation.

My body will not last, and I know this because I see it failing day by day. Anything I have done will not last, and I know this because I have seen all forms of heritage fall away. My soul will not even really last, because when my awareness ends, I too will no longer be.

That wont be the end of it, however. It will be rebuilt into something new. It will all be reborn. If you don’t believe me, look into your own garden. If you don’t have a garden, look into that of your neighbor or friend. If your neighbor or friend don’t have a garden, you need new neighbors and friends.

Does it offend you, or make your life inconvenient? Transform it. Make it right, at this very moment. After all, it is only here for a little time.

9.26

You have endured infinite troubles through not being contented with your ruling faculty, when it does the things that it is constituted by nature to do. But enough of this.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.26 (tr Long)

Unlike many of the trendier philosophies and life hacks, Stoicism has no hidden terms or mysterious conditions attached to it. Its effectiveness can quite easily be put to the test, because what is good or bad in life will follow from our own judgments and choices about what we think is worthy.

There is no requirement to wait for anything else to happen, or to set up a certain situation just so, or to hope for a change in the weather. Since our happiness is something under our control, there is never a need to second-guess ourselves.

In other words, if Stoicism doesn’t seem to be working for me, it’s only because I’m not letting it work, and I am still allowing circumstances to make my decisions for me. Can it be difficult to change my thinking and attitude? It most certainly can, but I can be confident that the only obstacles are right there within my own habits. I can change those habits if I only so choose, if I think it is really important enough to me.

I need to be completely honest with myself, of course, even brutally honest, since I can’t just pretend to change, to give the appearance without the actual commitment. If the decision is made, however, there is absolutely no reason I need to be laid low by anything; it may indeed be painful, but the pain doesn’t have to make or break me.

Another aspect of that honesty is asking myself what the causes of my grief in life have really been. I may try to squirm my way out of it, because it seems easier to blame someone or something else, yet I find, time and time again, that my misery has always been of my own making.

It’s not that I necessarily created the circumstances, even as I was certainly the one who decided they were so critical for me. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that when I didn’t get what I told myself I needed, I would then be heartbroken.

The burdens in my life were only heavy because I gave them weight, and the losses were only unbearable because of what I gave value. If I consider my life to be good only when I act with wisdom and virtue, then no way that I am being acted upon will make my life bad. If I am content with myself, with my power to be my own master, I will be satisfied, seeking nothing beyond myself.

If I’ve had enough of the endless longing, and the uncertainties, and the playing of games, then I can stop caring for all the wrong things. That is only my call, and I can decide at any moment that enough is enough.

9.27

When another blames you or hates you, or when men say about you anything injurious, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are.

You will discover that there is no reason to take any trouble that these men may have this or that opinion about you.

However, you must be well disposed towards them, for by nature they are friends. And the gods too aid them in all ways, by dreams, by signs, towards the attainment of those things on which they set a value.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.27 (tr Long)

I still surprise myself with how easily I am swayed by what others think of me, and especially by the fact that I am most concerned about the opinions of all the worst sorts of people. Old habits die hard, and I will struggle with them all the more when so many folks around me insist that flattery and fawning are the only way to live.

My difficulty is directly addressed by the Stoic mindset, because I am still letting the merit of my thoughts and actions be determined by the thoughts and actions of others. Instead of allowing my own conscience to inform me, I am looking over my shoulder at how I will be judged. I should certainly be listening to others and learning from others, but I shouldn’t let them do my deciding for me.

If I am grappling with resentment at the offenses of others, I have already let my worries take me too far. If I am indeed right to think that gossip, or slander, or actions motivated by malice are reflections of poor character, why am I then giving such weight to the people who practice these things?

If I consider it carefully, I will see that they are revealing their true colors to me. That they seek to condemn, or deceive, or abuse others is already a clear indication that their judgment is grounded in an ignorance of true human nature. I can even be grateful for being allowed to see why I should not trust them.

So as soon as anyone says he hates me, or wishes to do me harm, he has drawn the worth of his own judgments into question.

Yet at the same time I must be careful not to swing to the opposite extreme of being closed to others, and of inadvertently dismissing them as they might dismiss me. If I am also showing contempt, I am no better than what offends me. How ironic it is that in my weaker moments, the more I complain and fret about the injustices committed by others, the more I myself act unjustly toward others.

The rule is simple, if only I remind myself of it, day in and day out: help those who seek to do me harm, and show respect for every man, even if I cannot respect what he thinks, says, or does.

9.28.1

The periodic movements of the Universe are the same, up and down from age to age.

And either the Universal Intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect, and if this is so, be content with that which is the result of its activity; or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of sequence in a manner; or indivisible elements are the origin of all things.

In a word, if there is a God, all is well; and if chance rules, do not you also be governed by it. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.28 (tr Long)

Even the very idea of God, let alone the reality, makes some of us deeply uncomfortable. I understand completely, as there have been times when the thought of what is Absolute has made me cringe. I see so many people use it as an excuse for their own games of power, as an expression of the deepest hypocrisy, or as a way to put themselves in the place of what they claim to revere.

A few decades working for some of the scoundrels running the Catholic Church will certainly do that to any man.

I have found my own manner of coming to terms with this, of recognizing the difference between a holy man and a charlatan. Just as I do not reject the force of law because of an abusive cop, I do not reject God because of those who make a mockery of Him. My reason always reminds me that nothing comes from nothing, and that all purpose and order requires Intelligence.

Is that still not enough? No need for worry. God does not abandon what He has made simply because we question Him. The Divine is not subject to the same weaknesses as men.

Do you wonder if there really is a Universal Intelligence? In one sense, that is quite good. You are thinking for yourself, not being a simpering follower. You are not simply willing to accept some Big Man in the Sky, a greater version of the bullies and bosses we run into every day. If you imagine God that way, you are quite right to see it all as a cheap excuse.

No, I suggest, try to think of it more deeply. Recognize, as most every tradition of wisdom has for all of human time, that the Divine is not a power; the Divine is power, it is being, it is unity, it is goodness, and it is truth. It is everything, and nothing exists separate from it.

Let us imagine, however, for the sake of argument, that there is no God. Would it make any difference in practice about what makes the fulfillment of our own human nature good?

Perhaps God is the direct cause of each and every thing, at each and every moment, and so that tells me that my life is not in vain.

Perhaps God only got it all started, and lets it run itself, but that would still have the same effect.

Perhaps it all just boils down to how the parts of the world behave according to their own natures, but there would still be that very meaning behind it all.

Perhaps, just maybe, it’s all a game of chance. Even then, my own reason would ask me not to be subject to chance, but to rule myself with my mind, though there might be no greater Mind ruling me.

Let us bracket these profound questions if we must, but let us not neglect the immediacy of daily living. Whether or not there is a God, or whether or not there is an ultimate design, does it mean that you and I, as creatures of reason and of will, should cease knowing the truth and loving the good? Should we show any less compassion for our neighbors, however we may conceive of God? Should we reject the calling of our own hearts to live in justice, because we have been burned once too often?

A student of mine was once mistakenly worried that I thought less of her, because she didn’t have the faith she somehow thought I had. I reminded her that faith isn’t unreasonable at all, but rather accords with reason. More importantly, I suggested that we might not always see everything as it is, but we can still strive to be all that we are made to be.

As I always like to say, your mileage will vary. I look forward to a time when we manage to figure it out.

9.28.2

. . . Soon will the earth cover us all.

Then the earth, too, will change, and the things also that result from change will continue to change forever, and these again forever.

For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations that follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything that is perishable.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.28 (tr Long)

One may leave open, for the moment, the question of exactly why the Universe operates as it does. I could imagine a state of affairs where God orders things either directly or indirectly, or where the forces of different elements play off of one another, or even where things seem to come about for no immediately clear or discernible reason at all.

But what I cannot avoid is recognizing how all creatures are always in action and subject to change. They do so according to constant cycles of generation and destruction, of birth, life, death, and then rebirth once more, of one thing passing into yet another thing. A poetic friend of mine once described it as being in awe that there is no beginning or ending to beginnings or endings.

Now I could be saddened that nothing stays the same, that everything is rebuilt into something else, or I could embrace the fact that the very possibility of living itself is inherently a process, and that wherever there is activity there will be coming and going. Like a good journey, each stop and each moment can be enjoyed fully in their own way, understanding also that tomorrow one will be someplace else, and also someone else.

To know that life is an unfolding, and not a static state, can allow me to fully appreciate each opportunity that is given, to not put off what should be done now, and to accept the many stages of life in a proper perspective. It helps me to distinguish between the part and the whole, and to view each changing aspect as an expression of all of Nature.

At the same time, an awareness of change warns me to not depend upon any one thing too much, knowing that each is nothing at all on its own, and will never provide anything lasting. Any one thing only makes sense within the context of all things, just as I only make sense in relationship to what I came out of, and to what I will return.

Despising may sound like a rather strong word, but yes, I must even take that attitude of never loving any corruptible thing merely for or in itself, precisely because it is nothing for or in itself.

Every particular nature has its role in Universal Nature. My particular nature, as a rational animal, is to freely choose to live with virtue for whatever time I may live, in whatever circumstances I may live. That doesn’t make me everything, and it doesn’t make me permanent, but it gives me far more than I will ever need to be happy.  

9.29.1

The Universal Cause is like a winter torrent: it carries everything along with it.

But how worthless are all these poor people who are engaged in matters political, and, as they do, are playing the philosopher! All drivelers.

Well then, man: do what Nature now requires. Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about you to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic, but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.29 (tr Long)

If I think I will somehow have it only my own way, I must learn that I never will.

It isn’t just about me, it was never just about me, and it will never be just about me.

Now I understand that this might feel like a horrible put-down, one of the usual sort of insults, minus any of the foul language or clever superiority. It feels a bit like when someone tells me that I’m worthless.

But see, one of these things is not like the other. It is no insult to tell any man that he is not the center of the Universe; one actually does him a favor by reminding him of the fact.

It isn’t that you and I are worthless at all, but rather that we misunderstand our worth.

I consider myself like one single snowflake, a part of a great winter storm. How long will I last? It hardly matters in the bigger scheme of things. God makes the storm. God is the storm. Do I melt away? Yes. But I melt away with a vengeance, because all of it would never have happened without me, or the countless others.

Now look at the fancy folks. They are just snowflakes too, but they think they are the storm. See how they posture and preen. They go about, tossed by the winds, while claiming that they determine the winds.

“I made this. I will fix this. I am better than you. I know what is right. I will tell you what to do.”

Does that sound too familiar? We have all heard it.

Philosophy, according to Nature, is a man seeking to understand himself and his world. Philosophy, according to the sinister players, is a man seeking to elevate himself and to manipulate his world.

Some people want big results, for the least effort. They strut about, and they say big things, but they actually do no good at all. They act for their own glory.

And other people commit their lives to the smallest things, never expecting impressive gains. No one sees what they do, and yet they show unconditional love all the same. They act for the glory of what is right and true.

No, the humble people who get the job of life done are hardly noticed. The humble die, and the vain folks look the other way. The vain folks die, and they expect to be given a parade.

Let them have their parades. Better for us to stick with having a conscience.

None of us are the storm. We are all snowflakes, but that is still no small matter.

9.29.2

. . . For who can change men's opinions? And without a change of opinions what else is there than the slavery of men who groan while they pretend to obey?

Come now and tell me of Alexander and Philippus and Demetrius of Phalerum. They themselves shall judge whether they discovered what the Common Nature required, and trained themselves accordingly.

But if they acted like tragic heroes, no one has condemned me to imitate them.

Simple and modest is the work of philosophy. Draw me not aside to insolence and pride.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.29 (tr Long)

See how they all stand at their podiums and on their pedestals. They have their credentials and their references. They wave their arms around with apparent conviction, they throw out the statistics of their choice to defend themselves, and they try to shame us to conform to their wills. They are charming and clever, not virtuous and wise.

And I wonder if there was ever a time, from those ancient times to the present, when an ideological bully ever actually changed anyone else’s mind.

A reasoned argument, within the context of sincere friendship, might help another man change his own ways. But a big man has never, I suspect, convinced a small man of anything. He may scare him, intimidate him, or coerce him, but he doesn’t convince him. It takes wisdom and charity to move a mind and a heart, not threats and intimidation.

This will sound uncomfortable to all of the important folks, obviously, because if we ever figured it out, they would stop being so important.

There have been philosophers with all sorts of names, members of all sorts of movements and schools. Some practiced true philosophy, working quietly together with Nature, while many others were another bunch of actors playing a game, sophists trying to manipulate our emotions. The tricksters want us to imitate them in their exaggerated drama.

Does that sound too familiar? We have all known them, but we don’t need to be like them.

A statesman is never on who poses for the camera. A philosopher is never one who works on his career. A good man is never one who likes to be recognized. Life is no game of appearances. Life is a duty to character.

Have you done what is right and good, in even the smallest way? Good. You are a far better man than the fellow who wants to be seen as having done right and good, in his own biggest way.

9.30

Look down from above on the countless herds of men and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences among those who are born, who live together, and die.

And consider, too, the life lived by others in olden times, and the life of those who will live after you, and the life now lived among barbarous nations, and how many know not even your name, and how many will soon forget it, and how they who perhaps now are praising you will very soon blame you, and that neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.30 (tr Long)

I often hear people talk about finding a new perspective, or taking a different view, or, as became trendy a while ago in the business world, “thinking outside the box.” I also notice that we usually stay quite close to where we were before, look at things much the same as we always did, and become quite comfortable in that box.

I know that I fail to get out my own rut because it is quite honestly frightening to think differently. There’s so much more to it than just trying a new wardrobe, where I’m still worried about how I appear, or using a new tactic to get a promotion, where I’m still running after money and status, or speaking fancy new words, where I’m still working to impress.

The real challenge is in wondering if appearance, status, or reputation are really things I should be pursuing at all. That would be a real change of outlook, reevaluating the very principles I work from, and that will in turn feel quite uncomfortable, because it might ask me to cast away everything I’m so accustomed to.

I have at the same time discovered that a new visual perspective can assist me in forming a new moral perspective; looking at a person, place, or thing from a physically different distance or angle is helpful in acquiring a new mental attitude.

Though I have been wary of heights for some time, I am still drawn to looking at a city from the top of a tall building, or at a landscape from the window of an airplane. In one sense, the whole world below looks quite grand and glorious, as indeed it is, but in another sense all the individual bits and pieces seem quite small and fragile, even insignificant.

All those things that were so imposing when I stood right in front of them are now just little colored dots and blurs. At night a city can appear dazzling, but from far away all the lights just swirl together. Every single one of those specks of light is a street corner, or a home, or a business, and is right now at the center of someone’s attention. People are down there trying to become rich, obsessed about paying off their debts, or trying to fall in love over a drink.

Yet from higher up, none of it seems so important, so permanent, so heavy. That is the kind of changing of perspective that can be a blessed relief. Seeing the whole puts all the burden of the parts in their proper place.

All the sound and the bustle, all the fame, the fortune, and the fighting, and all the worry that goes along with them, aren’t much of anything at all. Of all the people running around down there, chances are that any one of them has absolutely no idea who any other one might be, and even if they have somehow crossed paths, the influence they may have had fades with distance. People who were once friends are now strangers, and people who were once famous are now forgotten.

Remembering that, I can choose to look away from petty concerns, and commit myself to the only thing that was ever really mine to begin with. For the brief time that I am here, I can order my actions by understanding, seek to practice good where I am able, and rest content with the merit of my own thoughts and deeds. The rest is a distraction from the calling of being human.

9.31

Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things that come from the external cause.

 And let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to your nature.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.31 (tr Long)

I will often employ foolish little trinkets, signs, images, or phrases to help me get back on track. To this day, for example, I will deliberately look at a little glass bird someone gave me many years ago. It’s a nice piece of work, but the person who gifted it back then decided I was entirely disposable. It reminds me that people will not always keep their promises.

For me, this is now a good thing, a recognition of what trust is truly meant to be. Like viewing that figurine, I also repeat certain words to myself when I feel that I am about to break. I repeat to myself, often many times a day: “Take the Stoic Turn.”

I don’t believe in any magic to certain expressions, and I don’t think that a word says anything beyond what it signifies. Still, words have power. To “turn” can mean to revolve, to spin, to change direction, to move, to become something different. To make a Stoic Turn, to me, means becoming a completely new person.

It means looking at everything quite backwards from the way it was familiar. And what is most familiar to us? We blame what happens to us, and we excuse what we do. We say that the world is wrong, and that we are right. We define who we are by our circumstances, and we forget our own character.

This, my friends, is where we need that Stoic Turn. No one has done us wrong. The world has never hurt us. The circumstances never make the man.

We only do ourselves wrong. We only fail to love the world. We only make of the circumstances what we will. 

What the world does, is precisely what the world does. I do not determine that, as much as I might like to. What I do is what I do. I do determine that, as much as I might not like to.

Take what comes from the outside, and let it be what it is. Look at what comes from the inside, and that is you, all you are, everything you are. Recognizing that is a Stoic Turn.

Think of it this way: you are not a victim, but you are a small creator.

That little bird once made me angry; it now helps me to love, to be social in all the right ways.

9.32

You can remove out of the way many useless things among those that disturb you, for they lie entirely in your opinion; and you will then gain for yourself ample space by comprehending the whole Universe in your mind, and by contemplating the eternity of time, and observing the rapid change of every several thing, how short is the time from birth to dissolution, and the illimitable time before birth as well as the equally boundless time after dissolution!

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.32 (tr Long)

I have often been falsely convinced that a burden is too much to bear, or that a certain suffering is irredeemable, or that a particular situation has simply become hopeless. Yet I then try to remember that the burden is only as heavy as I allow it to be, that suffering has as much or as little power over me as I choose, and that the situation was never really the problem to begin with. My thinking about the situation was the problem.

Of course it will all seem impossible if I decide that it is impossible; a sense of doom becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. To be liberated from being disturbed only becomes possible when I recognize where to place the most perfect human good.

Yes, there may be forces acting upon me. Yes, it may hurt mightily. Yes, I may not be able to change my conditions. But, as a creature of reason and choice, my own judgments and actions are what define me. As long as I retain that power, I may consider the very core of my humanity to be invincible. It is only when I transfer authority to the things outside of me that I surrender my own happiness.

People will often have very different perspectives on a philosophy, and Stoicism will be no different. For myself, however, I have never been able to bring myself to cherry-pick my Stoicism. I don’t find it possible to fully embrace Stoic ethics without the context of Stoic physics, to understand my own role as a part without the purpose of the whole.

I see something similar here, when Marcus Aurelius explains that learning to overcome being disturbed and frustrated proceeds together with a sense of oneself within the grand scale of things.

As is so often the case, circumstances will become far more manageable in my judgment when I put everything in its rightful place.

My mind can order things by the measure of scale, and thereby discern that what may appear so big and powerful is actually rather small and weak. What will all of our petty squabbles and winnings be in the face of the Infinite?

My mind can also grasp that however little time I may have, and however limited the scope of my influence, I can, if I only so decide, retain complete and absolute over my own character. What will all the actions of others be if I do not permit them to do me any harm?

If I know where I stand, and if I know who and what I am, I do not need to fear, I do not need to be angry, and I do not need to let myself be distressed. I am still the captain of my own ship, and I am familiar with the map of the seas on which I am sailing.

9.33

All that you see will quickly perish, and those who have been spectators of its dissolution will very soon perish too.

And he who dies at the most extreme old age will be brought into the same condition with him who died prematurely.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.33 (tr Long)

There are all sorts of things in life that we are convinced we need, though it usually turns out that we only want them. I find that the distinction is far too often overlooked, and that Stoicism can help us to rightly understand it.

For the Stoic, virtue is the only absolute and unconditional good of human nature, because it is our own thoughts and actions that are distinctly our own. All other things are good for us in a relative and conditional way, in that they are only of benefit to us when they assist us in being virtuous.

Accordingly, it is said that we should be indifferent to anything other than our moral worth, free to prefer certain circumstances if they do not conflict with out character, while also immediately willing to let them go if they do conflict with our character. I may want to be rich or popular, but all of that should be secondary to my need to be good.

As soon as he was old enough to carry on a proper conversation, my son started wondering why so much of the advertising on television was about things we didn’t really need.

Yes, I am simultaneously proud of him and fearful for him.

One particular time when we were watching a show together, he said that the ads seemed to be directed at older people. I asked him why he thought that, and he immediately pointed out that they were about selling drugs to help us live longer.

I couldn’t resist throwing out a further question. “Well, is that something we need, or something we just want?”

He thought for a moment, and then offered an observation. “Some nice people don’t live long at all, and some mean people live for a really long time.” I do so wish that were a more common insight.

In the end, the difference between a longer life and a shorter life is not that great at all, but the difference between a virtuous life and a vicious life is quite great. We are made to be here only for a very brief time, but we are made to live well while we are here. It reflects the priority of quality over quantity, and more specifically the quality of what is inside of us over the quality of what is outside of us.

Or put another way, we will all end up in the same state, though what we did before that end will make all of the difference.

9.34

What are these men's leading principles, and about what kinds of things are they busy, and for what kind of reasons do they love and honor?

Imagine that you see their poor souls laid bare. When they think that they do harm by their blame, or good by their praise, what an idea!

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.34 (tr Long)

Many people in this world will try to make you feel small, and they will usually do so because they themselves want to feel big. As difficult as it may seem, do not measure yourself by their standards, but rather look at who they truly are, as is revealed by the character of what they say and what they do. Compare this to the measure of Nature.

You will find that they are not all they make themselves out to be. When they praise themselves in public, you know that you are dealing with arrogant men. When they speak fine words but act with malice, you know that you are dealing with dishonest men. When they continually take and take without any giving anything at all, you know that you are dealing with greedy men.

This becomes all the more apparent when you discern toward what ends they commit most of their time and effort. The fact that they spend so much time in church or at public events should not mislead you, because they do that in their own service, to be revered. Trust the man who does what is good for others, never expecting to be revered.

See them as they are, not as they would wish us to see them. Observe how they try to hurt others with their words and deeds, or shame their enemies, or insist that it is always someone else’s fault. Observe how they lift up their lackeys, or give favors to their supposed friends, but only as long as it remains convenient.

Indeed, what an idea! Consider the self-conceit, and you need consider no more!

Who have I just described to myself? If I have any part in it, I know exactly where the work needs to be done. Justice starts right here at home. When I in turn see this in others, my challenge is not to twist the call of loving them into even more hatred.

There is a certain nastiness in sounding righteous while at the same time being terribly self-righteous. At one point in my past life I became quite a master of that skill, having followed all the wrong folks, and deciding that I would somehow make myself better by being full of piss and vinegar.

No good ever came from it, and no good will now ever come from it. If I spend my time being resentful, and putting down anyone who rubs me the wrong way, I have already laid bare exactly who I am. What I may have called strength was a pathetic weakness, and what I may have called conviction was the most puerile posturing.

Show me what anyone does in his daily life, regardless of his professional persona. There will be found real humanity, in all its successes and failures, stripped of all the illusions.

9.35

Loss is nothing else than change.

But the Universal Nature delights in change, and in obedience to her all things are now done well, and from eternity have been in like form, and will be such to time without end.

What, then, do you say—that all things have been and all things always will be bad, and that no power has ever been found in so many gods to rectify these things, but the world has been condemned to be bound in never ceasing evil?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.35 (tr Long)

Well yes, I have sadly said exactly that to myself more times than I can count: the world is a mess, everything dies, and the only necessary thing is to accept misery.

And why did I say that, over and over? Because I wanted to surrender, because it seemed the easier choice to fall down than to stand up, because I preferred blaming others to taking a real responsibility for myself.

The world will only seem bad when we see it backwards, when we confuse what we can give with what has been given, when we replace life as a calling with life as an entitlement. Will things happen to us that hurt? Yes, of course. Will they not, however, always, without a single exception, also give us the opportunity to live with virtue and with love?

Each and every situation I have ever encountered asked me to live well, even when I denied it.

It will only appear to be “bad” or “evil” when the very function of a free and rational animal is reduced to that of a mindless beast, ruled by gratification. It is natural for sheep to be sheep, but not for men to be sheep.

“But people do terrible things!” Yes, now you yourself can do wonderful things.

“But others do not treat me fairly!” Yes, now you yourself have the gift of being fair.

“But there is death, and there is suffering, and there is loss!” Yes, there is change all around us, but you have it within your power to make your own change, for the short time that you live, to be an expression of your own compassion and concern.

Absolutely nothing is taken from us when the world changes around us, since we can consistently maintain an attitude driven by conscience and character while we still live.

This may not be character of the sweeping and epic sort, but it never needs to be; a humble and unassuming variety will do just fine. True heroes don’t necessarily change everything around them, even as they have the power to change themselves to the core.

There are many things I may think I have lost over the years. I may think I lost the dearest friendship, or I may think I lost a child, or I may think I lost the opportunities for being important, rich, and admired. Lately, I tend to worry that I will lose my very life before it’s rightful time. None of that was ever lost, or ever will be, because it was never mine to begin with.

My challenge to myself, which I will often resist with much kicking and screaming, is to recognize that nothing that is good for me can be taken away. I will only comprehend this when I in turn accept myself as a creature of action, not merely one of passion.

I will probably not win by playing the game of circumstances, even as I will always win by following the calling of virtue. That is true for each and every one of us. There is no failure, or evil, we do not choose for ourselves.

Nature works as it does for a very good reason, and it is my task to discover this instead of throwing a tantrum. I choose to trust in Providence.

A change is never an injustice; a change is an expression of growth and of transformation. Of course all these things end, but I decide who I will be in the face of those endings.

9.36

The rottenness of the matter that is the foundation of everything!

Water, dust, bones, filth: or again, marble rocks, the callosities of the earth; and gold and silver, the sediments; and garments, only bits of hair; and purple dye, blood; and everything else is of the same kind.

And that which is of the nature of breath is also another thing of the same kind, changing from this to that.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.36 (tr Long)

Many philosophies can enlighten the mind and inspire the heart, but few philosophies, I have found, can speak so deeply to daily practice as that of the Stoics.

Whenever anything seems to be so overwhelming, I can employ just one simple trick. I must only ask myself, “What is it made of?”

The overall image might be quite impressive, but I must only examine the parts that constitute it. A charming house, but it is made of straw. A seductive smile, but it’s the lipstick that gives it so much class. An imposing demeanor, but without the expensive suit he’s just another old fat man.

All of it, every single thing, is made of exactly the same sort of matter. None of it ever stays in the same form, none of it is lasting, and none of it is invincible. It is all weak, malleable, and corruptible. Yes, in and of itself, it is quite pathetic. Look at all the bits that make it up, and it will no longer seem so powerful. This is an incredibly effective way to put everything, and everyone, in their rightful place.

I have seen corpses three times in my life, not counting the plastic mannequins we view at funerals. Each and every time I was certainly terrified how this vessel once housed a soul, but most importantly I saw how fragile that vessel truly was.

A sight I can never remove from my memory is that of a dead child with a smashed skull, just run over by a car. Blood was still seeping onto the road, and the eyes were still open. It haunts me, but it also informs me. I, too, am nothing more than that. I am not made of iron, and I will be crushed as well. Even the iron in this world will rust.

Look at the boss who bullies you, or the so-called friend who insults you behind your back, or the lover who has betrayed you. The outsides may intimidate you, but the insides are made of the same organic mush that you are. It is hardly as big as you think.

Look at the threatening letters your bank sends you when you happen to be late on a payment for this or that. The outsides may frighten you, but the insides are just paper printed off from a lifeless machine, in turn produced from an algorithm written by a pimply programmer. It is hardly as horrifying as you think.

Look at the pain you have carried with you for years and years, because a certain event made you doubt everything you held dear. The outsides may leave you hopeless, but the insides are nothing more than things happening as they will happen, and people doing what they will do. It is hardly as traumatizing as you think.

Pardon my French, but all the big people also pass gas, stink of sweat, pick their dirty toenails, have hemorrhoids, and are slowly dying from diseases they don’t yet know they have, just like you and me.

All the big things in life are slowly crumbling, falling apart moment by moment, and will be ugly tomorrow, even as they were thought beautiful today.

And to recognize this is not a bad thing at all. It is liberation. It’s all made of the same components, and all of it comes and goes. That leaves only one thing that makes any difference, even if it too shall pass: the life lived with character while it can still be lived. That is the most practical guidance.

9.37

Enough of this wretched life, and murmuring, and apish tricks. Why are you disturbed?

What is there new in this? What unsettles you? Is it the form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it.

But besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods then, now become at last more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine these things for a hundred years or three.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.37 (tr Long)

I notice quite often how people like to insist that they are so very happy, yet they still regularly clench their jaws in frustration, or bicker with their neighbors, or sit there during a conversation while ripping up ever-smaller pieces of paper. There is lots of aggression, resentment, and scheming, and I wonder how that could possibly be happiness.

So much of it involves playing a role when people are looking, and then thrashing about when we think no one is really looking. It is the cult of appearances, the substitution of outward posturing for inner peace.

I know it quite well, because I’ve done it myself. I feel miserable, I complain all of the time, and then I play the part of some trained animal doing a clever performance to win some tasty treats. I may curse the boss, but I still beg like a dog, forcing myself to wag my tail, whenever he casts his glance my way.

What is truly bothering me? The fact that I am not myself, but rather allowing myself to be ruled by images. I lie to myself, and to others, and say that all is fine; but it isn’t fine, because I have a hole in my heart.

What is it that entrances me? The vanity of the outsides, and the neglect of the insides. I must look more closely. It is all made of gross matter, put together for this moment in a temporary form.

Why should that frighten me? It shouldn’t. They are all just things, each one no more impressive than any other. Their power is in how I think about them, never in what they actually are.

Be simple and be better. These two go together. Simplicity is not about having less, but about being more through wanting less. Being better is not about lording it over others, but about seeing myself within others, and others within myself.

It is time to stop being a mimicking ape, and to become a man who rules. I need not rule anything, however, beyond myself. That is enough. That fact won’t change, however long I fret over it.

9.38

If a man has done wrong, the harm is his own.

But perhaps he has not done wrong.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.38 (tr Long)

The first statement is classic Stoicism. The second statement is Stoicism in its sharpest form. It is one thing to understand that the wrongs of another can do me no harm, but it goes even further to admit that perhaps there was never a wrong to begin with.

If I have felt hurt, my first assumption is that someone has hurt me. No, I have only hurt myself, while the actions of another have darkened his own character. Our thoughts and deeds reflect back onto ourselves, for good or for ill.

Still, I will be tempted to cast blame. This relieves me of responsibility, and allows me to harbor a resentment to justify my indignation and outrage. I assume that if evil was done to me, I am now permitted to do evil in return, and so we continue in the cycle of hatred for hatred.

Yes, a terrible injustice may have been committed, my possessions taken, or my reputation ruined, or my body crippled. Still, my own judgment will determine how I allow any of this to affect me. The evil begins in another man’s heart and mind, and he wishes to cast it upon me as well. Yet if I simply hold up my hand and do not allow it to enter my own heart and mind, the evil stays with him.

Allow me to also consider the power of my own estimation at a deeper level than that. I am the one in control of the damage done to my soul by an offense. Am I not also the one in control of discerning if there even was an offense at all?

How often have I hastily judged that someone has acted with malice, or is out to get me, or has wished to do me some harm? And how often has that perception actually been completely false, a result only of my own imagination, a foolish assumption that says nothing about what is wrong with another, and everything about what is wrong with me?

It is easy to rush to a conclusion, and to let my doubts about my own motives lead to my questioning the motives of others. I am still allowing my impressions to rule me instead of ruling myself.

By all means, let me bear any wrongdoing by another with dignity and charity. Let me also be careful never to think there even was any wrongdoing where it did not exist. It is a noble thing to be the better man, and nobler still not to presume that another is the worse man.

9.39

Either all things proceed from one Intelligent Source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than mixture and dispersion.

Why, then, are you disturbed? Say to the ruling faculty, are you dead, are you corrupted, are you playing the hypocrite, have you become a beast, do you herd and feed with the rest?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.39 (tr Long)

Most all of the Classical Stoics, in varying ways and to varying degrees, argued that the Universe was completely One, was ruled by Providence, and had at its heart the design of Perfect Mind.

Call it God, or Zeus, or Logos, or the Highest Pneuma, the Breath and Fire of Life. It is still the absolute force that gives meaning and purpose to all things.

They did not consider God as any distant and impersonal power, or as some bureaucratic administrator. They rather saw all creatures as aspects of the One, expressions of a Divine Awareness that was itself perfect being, as small parts that had no meaning at all outside of that greater whole. Our own minds are nothing but an extension of Mind.

If the Stoics were correct in this view, then there can never be any doubt about our own particular place in this life. Whatever has happened, has happened for a reason, intended by the Divine. It is not God who fails us, as there is no absence in whatever is complete.

No, we are the ones who sadly fail to embrace the freedom of our nature within all of Nature. We fail ourselves through the power that is shared with us.

Even when we abuse our own choices, however, these are already pieces of how all of existence will unfold. Nothing is in vain, and everything is in service, directly or indirectly, to the fullness of all that is. It is about Being, not just about beings.

But let us imagine that there is no God, and no Unity, and there is no greater plan, and it all boils down to the random behavior of matter thrown about this way or that, with no real rhyme or reason behind any of it. Many opponents of the Stoics, especially the Epicureans, argued for precisely that. It is also the philosophical trend of our age to think this way, so we must surely take it into account.

Well, but what of it? We can bracket, for the moment, the source and purpose, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of it all. Assume, for the sake of argument, that there is no higher, greater, or deeper meaning. Does this in any way negate the very identity of what I certainly know that I am, regardless of where I may have come from, and where I might be going?

I am a being endowed with the power of thought, and with a freedom of will. What I do is not merely the result of how I am acted upon, but of how I decide to act. I will even not call myself a creature, if you prefer, because that implies a Creator; let me just be a someone, a something that also has consciousness.

Somehow, perhaps, all the atoms just “happened” to come together to make a living animal, and a rational animal at that. I am still exactly what I was before, as in any other model, and my mission in life should be no different than it was before.

Know what is true. Love what is good. Act with virtue. I should be my own master, subject to only my own rightly informed conscience in how I live. As long as I remain a something, a someone, given reason and choice, I should fear nothing, never be determined by what is beyond my power, or be a slave to any other thing or to any other man.

Imagine, with John Lennon, that there is no God, and even then real moral character would not change one tiny bit. I should not lie, or steal, or seek money and power, or play all the games of pleasure we are so fond of playing. I am not merely an animal, ruled by passions, but a rational animal, ruled by my own judgments.

If you tell me there is no evidence for God, I will politely shrug my shoulders, and I will not bully you about the fact that all existence is itself evidence for God, God in action. Effects are measured by their causes. I have no intention of being offended, or fighting you, or casting you out of my life.

But if you tell me that you are not a being of reason and will, I will hold a mirror to your face.

You give me an argument that you are just an animal? You have just proven you are more than an animal, by appealing to reason.

You insist that you have no choice? I see you making a choice at this very moment, when you know full well you could have chosen differently.

You tell me you are ruled by desire alone? Your very telling itself requires an understanding beyond desire.

I will love and respect you, whoever you are, and whatever you might think. I still believe that none of us were made for nothing. Tell me that there is no God, and I will understand completely, having felt that way many times before; tell me that you are not a being of awareness, and I will question either your sanity or your honesty.

No God? Fine, if you must insist. You say you cannot “see” Him, even as he stares you in the face. No humanity? On that no one can ever insist, already being human to begin with.

Removing God will not changes the calling of our virtue, the expression of everything that is our nature. But how wonderful it would be, if we could choose to understand our nature within all of Nature. God is not something outside; God is.

9.40

Either the gods have no power or they have power. If, then, they have no power, why do you pray to them? But if they have power, why do you not pray for them to give you the faculty of not fearing any of the things that you fear, or of not desiring any of the things that you desire, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?

 For certainly if they can cooperate with men, they can cooperate for these purposes. But perhaps you will say the gods have placed them in your power. Well, then, is it not better to use what is in your power like a free man than to desire in a slavish and abject way what is not in your power?

 And who has told you that the gods do not aid us, even in the things that are in our power? Begin, then, to pray for such things, and you will see.

One man prays thus: How shall I be able to lie with that woman? You should pray thus: How shall I not desire to lie with her?

Another prays thus: How shall I be released from this? Pray you: How shall I not desire to be released?

Another thus: How shall I not lose my little son? You thus: How shall I not be afraid to lose him?

In the end, turn your prayers this way, and see what comes.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.40 (tr Long)

I am sometimes quite wary of prayer, the most immediate reason being my own sense of pride. I confuse self-reliance with separation and isolation, failing to understand that ruling myself should always proceed in harmony and cooperation with everything and everyone around me, and especially with what is greater than me. Instead of making me weaker, having the courage to ask for assistance in improving myself can actually be a sign of great courage.

I also allow myself to be discouraged when I see the way many people use prayer, as a means for building their own influence over others. A decent man may tell me that he will pray for me, and I will feel grateful that he desires what is good for me, but a crooked man may tell me that he will pray for me, and I have only the distinct sense that he is looking down at me, showing me how much better he thinks he is.

A bit of clear judgment should, however, help me to discern the difference between a rightful use and a corrupted abuse. Notice, for example, how people will go about offering up prayers. Some ask for an increase in their circumstances, to be given greater power over the world around them. Others, however, will ask instead for the strength to bolster their virtues, to learn a greater power over themselves.

That difference tells us so much about what folks really care about, and how they see their own good in relationship to the good of the whole.

I try not to think of prayer as some magic formula, or as a fancy business transaction, but rather as a means for me to communicate more fully with the Divine, and thereby to understand my place more completely. Prayer can involve speaking, but it requires even more of listening. Prayer can involve asking, but it requires even more of embracing acceptance. It is less about fitting the world to my desires, but about fitting my desires to the world.

If the Divine, however we may understand it or express it, is truly the source, center, and measure of all things, building our relationship with the Divine is hardly a wasted effort. For me, it becomes most critical to consider how that bond should be strengthened. Will it make me better and happier if the external conditions of my life are more convenient, or will it make me better and happier if I can face any and all external conditions with more character? The Stoic, and I also think most any man who seeks holiness, knows the answer right away.

It is better to ask for help in conquering my own fear, than to ask that the things I fear be swept away.

It is better to ask for help in mastering my own passions, than to ask that any temptations disappear.

It is better to ask for help in transforming my own suffering, than to ask for suffering to be removed.

While the former will always allow me more of a chance to be a brave and good man, the latter will only encourage me to be a weak and slavish man. If I want God’s help in being happy, it is best to ask Him to help me to reform myself, not to become lazy or entitled.

I used to resent it when my family told me that “God helps those who help themselves.” I am far more grateful for the advice now.

If I am convinced I already have the power within me to go the distance, then let me pray by being grateful for having received it. If I recognize that I require more conviction and courage, then let me pray that it be increased, knowing that the seed within me must only be cultivated.

If all is One, joined together and ruled by Providence, prayers are not in vain; my own reason and will are simply seeking to fulfill themselves, strengthening the power of their nature through the power of all of Nature.

It only began to make a difference for me, in quite a concrete way, when my practice of prayer was not about changing God or about changing the world, but about changing myself.

9.41

Epicurus says, “In my sickness my conversation was not about my bodily sufferings, nor,” says he, “did I talk on such subjects to those who visited me; but I continued to discourse on the nature of things as before, keeping to this main point, how the mind, while participating in such movements as go on in the poor flesh, shall be free from perturbations and maintain its proper good.”

“Nor did I,” he says, “give the physicians an opportunity of putting on solemn looks, as if they were doing something great, but my life went on well and happily.”

Do, then, the same that he did both in sickness, if you are sick, and in any other circumstances. For never to desert philosophy in any events that may befall us, nor to hold trifling talks either with an ignorant man or with one unacquainted with Nature, is a principle of all schools of philosophy; but to be intent only on that which you are now doing and on the instrument by which you do it.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.41 (tr Long)

How absolutely wonderful!

Philosophers of different schools often seem to find great pleasure in bickering with one another about the pettiest of distinctions. In fact, philosophers of the very same school seem to do this even more, condemning those who should be their dearest friends, with all the spite they can muster.

What does that tell us about their real values, and their real intentions?

Yet here we have Marcus Aurelius, a follower of the school of Stoicism, finding merit in the words of Epicurus, the founder of Stoicism’s greatest rival school. The man shows that he is truly a man, not a posturing ideologue; truth is truth, wherever it may be found, and charity is charity, whoever we may meet. I find that example deeply inspiring.

Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus may disagree on the order and priority of virtue and pleasure, or on the specific forces by which Nature operates, but they find common ground on how the good life will be able to rise above all the diversions of circumstance.

What may come my way? I may feel taken down by pain, or lifted up by pleasure, or concerned with my health and appearance, or anxious about my possessions, or in fear of my enemies, or desperate to satisfy my friends. Different situations will come to me at different times, in new and surprising ways, often when least expected. One impression after another will dance before me, and each will exert a pull on my attention.

What may I be tempted to do? I may wish to reach out and define myself by each of these events. I may want to make absolutely everything about what is merely something, using those that I consider convenient as a means to glorify myself, and those that I consider inconvenient as a means to cast blame on the world. Sometimes I will try to brag and strut about, and sometimes I will try to complain and play the victim. I may want to be a player, but I am really only letting myself be played.

What should I actually be doing? I should be accepting the things that happen to me for what they are, however beneficial or harmful they may appear, and direct my efforts to the purpose of what I, in turn, can choose to do. Anything right or wrong in it will only follow from my own understanding of what is true and my own love of what is good. I will only be confused or led astray by what I decide is important. A focused mind will live with suffering, and disease, and poverty, and loneliness, and pettiness, but it will not be determined by these states.

Please do not confuse this with any sort of heartless or dismissive toughness; it is rather a peace and tranquility that comes from being able to distinguish what is more important from what is less important.

Though we may hardly notice it if we wander into the halls of academia, philosophy is a far more noble, uplifting, and absolutely necessary vocation than merely presenting an image, or manipulating conditions, or coming across as the victor in some conflict. What all true philosophers share in common is also what all good people share in common, an absolute dedication to living well above all else, never permitting lower distractions from interfering with this higher calling.

9.42.1

When you are offended with any man's shameless conduct, immediately ask yourself, Is it possible, then, that shameless men should not be in the world? It is not possible.

Do not, then, require what is impossible. For this man also is one of those shameless men who must of necessity be in the world. Let the same considerations be present to your mind in the case of the knave, and the faithless man, and of every man who does wrong in any way.

For at the same time that you do remind yourself that it is impossible that such kind of men should not exist, you will become more kindly disposed towards every one individually.

It is useful to perceive this, too, immediately when the occasion arises, what virtue Nature has given to man to oppose to every wrongful act. For she has given to man, as an antidote against the stupid man, mildness, and against another kind of man some other power.

And in all cases it is possible for you to correct by teaching the man who is gone astray, for every man who errs misses his object and is gone astray.

Besides, wherein have you been injured? For you will find that no one among those against whom you are irritated has done anything by which your mind could be made worse; but that which is evil to you and harmful has its foundation only in the mind.

And what harm is done or what is there strange, if the man who has not been instructed does the acts of an uninstructed man? . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.42 (tr Long)

I should never be surprised at how truly vicious people can be, just as I should never be surprised at how truly virtuous people can be. The reason for both of these is one and the same. If a creature is endowed with reason, it is also endowed with choice, and its actions will proceed not merely from the force of instinct, but from the freedom of its own judgments. Where there is awareness, all forms of character will be possible.

Knowing that people will think in all sorts of ways, however true or false they may be, also means knowing that people will live in all sorts of ways, however right or wrong they may me. I notice we are sometimes expected to express shock or disbelief at the depths of depravity or the heights of nobility, but these are to be expected as a necessary expression of a Nature charged with consciousness.

If I can understand this, I can also begin to consider why people will decide upon certain paths, and this in turn will help me show them compassion instead of condemnation. Once I become more familiar with the why, I will not be quite so offended by the what. However terrible it may be, don’t I see that I could just as easily be making the exact same mistake? Would I not then prefer to be helped rather than harmed?

Nature is ordered such that from any state of affairs, however painful or frightening it may appear, there is always the possibility of transforming it into something truly good. As one of those creatures of reason and choice, I am constantly called to pursue that option. I may feel discouraged when I see how much wrong people do, but there are so many ways to turn it all into a right.

I can always respond to any evil by simply doing what is good. Nature has already given me all the tools I need for this, and whatever the circumstances may be, it is never beyond my power to think and act with virtue. Has someone told a lie? Let me tell the truth. Has someone acted unjustly? Let me reply with justice. Has someone spilled out his hatred? Let me remedy it with love.

I can always help someone else choose to become better, by sharing with him the truth as I have experienced it, by serving as a humble example, or by simply offering friendship and understanding. It is not my place to live another man’s life for him, as only he can to do that, but it is my responsibility to encourage and support his own efforts to live well.

I can always remember that any evil done by another does not really affect the inside of me at all, unless I choose to let it do so by my own disordered thinking. We are often so busy listing everything that is wrong with the world, while failing to recognize that the solution is in embracing what is right in ourselves. If it is hurting me within my soul, influencing me in any way beyond external conditions, that hurt is from my own fault.

How beautiful it is that anything intended to hurt me can only help me to become better! When I am confronted with yet more wickedness, I am able to exercise even greater strength of character; the practice will help me to become more perfect.

9.42.2

. . . Consider whether you should not rather blame yourself, because you did not expect such a man to err in such a way. For you had means given you by your reason to suppose that it was likely that he would commit this error, and yet you have forgotten and are amazed that he has erred.

But most of all when you blame a man as faithless or ungrateful, turn to yourself. For the fault is manifestly your own, whether you did trust that a man who had such a disposition would keep his promise, or when conferring your kindness you did not confer it absolutely, nor yet in such way as to have received from your very act all the profit.

For what more do you want when you have done a man a service? Are you not content that you have done something conformable to your nature, and do you seek to be paid for it?

It is just as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking. For as these members are formed for a particular purpose, and by working according to their several constitutions obtain what is their own, so also as man is formed by Nature to acts of benevolence. When he has done anything benevolent or in any other way conducive to the common interest, he has acted conformably to his constitution, and he gets what is his own.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.42 (tr Long)

If, as a child, I chose to associate with those of my peers who mocked, ridiculed, and bullied one another, should I not have expected that I would then find myself sad, discouraged, and alone? Even at such a tender age, I could have seen immediately what I was getting into.

“The friends you choose reflect who you are,” my betters told me, and I didn’t pay enough attention to that. It wasn’t the fault of spoiled and vicious children, but of my own foolishness. They would be who they would be, but I made myself miserable.

If, as a young man, I chose to fall deeply in love with a girl who was dishonest, disloyal, and dismissive from the very beginning, should I not have expected a broken heart? Even though I was fired up by passion, I could have seen immediately what I was getting into.

“Find a kind woman, however humble she may seem, knowing that you can trust her,” my betters told me, and I didn’t pay enough attention to that. It wasn’t the fault of someone whose blood ran cold, but of my own choice not to think clearly. She would be who she would be, but I had dug my own grave.

If, as a grown man, I chose to follow a professional path filled with poseurs and players, should I not have expected to fail when I tried to engage them on their terms? Even as I told myself I was driven by principles, I was really just being a submissive follower.

“Don’t worry whether your trade makes you rich in money or fame, but worry whether your trade makes you rich in happiness and character,” my betters told me, and I didn’t pay enough attention to that. It wasn’t the fault of manipulators, but of letting myself be manipulated. They would be who they would be, but I painted myself into a corner.

If others act so poorly, it is so easy to blame them for my own loss; yet who they are is nothing I have any control over, even as I have complete control over myself. The finger is pointed in entirely the wrong direction.

My error lies in expecting something beyond my own excellence, to make my dignity depend upon some reward beyond living well for its own sake. Does the approval of friends, or conquest in romance, or success in any career make me any better? Not in the least. I am better by what I have done rightly, within itself, asking for nothing other than that as the most perfect reward.

As soon as I worked to be liked, loved, or important in the world, I was working against myself.

Eyes are made for seeing, and feet are made for walking, and men are made for virtue. This is apparent by simply examining the essence of what these parts are, revealing their purpose within the whole. Let a foot be a foot, and a man be a man. That is all that is required.