Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.9

Reverence the faculty that produces opinion. On this faculty it entirely depends whether there shall exist in your ruling part any opinion inconsistent with Nature and the constitution of the rational animal.

And this faculty promises freedom from hasty judgment, and friendship towards men, and obedience to the gods.

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

Everything else will proceed from our estimation, from the manner in which our judgments inform our choices and actions. It will be for us to decide if we follow opinion that conforms to reason and Nature, or if we let opinion be moved only by the push and pull of impressions and desires.

I was always deeply inspired by all sorts of stories as a child, and they didn’t have to be the popular ones from television cartoons or comic books. I remember the first time someone told me the story of the Judgment of Solomon, and my first response was one of complete horror. All I could initially see in my imagination was a mean and heartless king, who appeared willing to cut a child in half just to prove some point. 

It had been my uncle who told me the story, after I had asked about a painting in his rectory. I told him how I thought the decision seemed wrong, because it was built on fear. He kindly and patiently asked me to think about it from a different point of view. I can still remember his words: “Solomon looked at the disagreement between the two women, and he found where there was real love in all of it.”

Over the years, this worked on me in two ways. First, whenever I came across the story again, I began to have more of an understanding for Solomon’s dilemma. He was confronted with two rival claims, and with no apparent way to distinguish between them. It must all have looked like a jumble of accusation, anger, and jealousy. Yet in the midst of this, he discerned a way to determine the rightful mother. He uncovered the truth behind the appearances, what was just and fair beyond the emotions.

Second, I also began to see how my own reaction to the story itself underwent a change, from being overwhelmed by instinctive feelings, to reflecting on what those feelings meant. What looked to me like recklessness and cruelty was actually wisdom and compassion. It allowed the true thoughts and intentions of the women to come to light. Solomon had seen beneath the mask, and I was doing something similar within myself.

Feeling that rushes ahead of thinking will inevitably lead to careless action. Impressions are powerful, but understanding makes it possible for me to consider something from different sides, and to see the reasons for all of those possible perspectives. I could feel only my own desire or resentment, or I could go further and ask why I am feeling it, how another may be feeling, and what I can do to gain a mastery over myself.

I can surely only show respect for a friend, or a reverence for Providence, if I seek to see things as they are, not only how they feel to me at a certain moment. 

Written in 1/2005

Image: Peter Paul Rubens, The Judgment of Solomon (c. 1617)

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.8

In the mind of one who is chastened and purified you will find no corrupt matter, nor impurity, nor any sore skinned over.

Nor is his life incomplete when fate overtakes him, as one may say of an actor who leaves the stage before ending and finishing the play.

Besides, there is in him nothing servile, nor affected, nor too closely bound to other things, nor yet detached from other things, nothing worthy of blame, nothing that seeks a hiding place.

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

I have often wondered what part I am expected to play in life, whether I will manage to complete it, and how I might possibly know when the job is done. It can seem a bit like trying to assemble something without directions, or finding a destination without a map.

I may worry that I am playing a guessing game, uncertain if I have overlooked some important part, or if I took a wrong turn somewhere. I may fret about the whole outcome, and ask myself if it would be better had I only made different choices. Is this the life I was supposed to have, or did I botch it?

The very fact that I will worry in this way is itself a part of the hindrance. I am concerned whether, as Marcus Aurelius says, fate has overtaken me. This is only a problem, however, if I am defining myself by my circumstances, if I am enslaved by what goes on around me. It hardly makes a difference what the conditions of my life may be, or how all the pieces are lined up, but rather how I go about thinking and acting, whatever the situation is. I’m so obsessed with having my ducks in a row, that the ducks have made me forget myself.

This is why it doesn’t matter if my life is long or short, rich or poor, revered or reviled. I may play the lead, with my name in lights, or I may play a bit part. I may even just sweep the stage after the show. I shouldn’t bother myself with where I may be located, or if I am in the situation I’m somehow supposed to be in. Nature will take care of all of that on her own, and she only asks me to act with virtue, whatever comes my way.

I see this as being what is “purified” about a Stoic life. I can remove what is extraneous, whatever ties me down to worrying about having the world ordered in just the right manner. The world already is ordered as it should be, and I just need to order myself. I am not separated from other things, but I am also not ruled by them.

I sometimes think of a Stoic liberty like an artist who is able to work in any medium. He is able to make something beautiful, whatever he may have at hand.

I think of my wife, who has the knack of throwing together a delicious meal from anything that happens to be in the pantry. She doesn’t need a cookbook, and her instincts are such that she has long abandoned measuring cups.

I think of my father, who told me that an education doesn’t really depend as much on the school you go to, but on what you find for yourself wherever you attend.

I’ve heard it attributed to Yogi Berra, the Buddha, or Confucius, but I first learned it from Buckaroo Banzai: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Some people tell me it’s all about “being in the right place” in your life, but I have started to think it’s more about doing the right thing, wherever I happen to be. I may not know how the plot will unfold, but I don’t need to. I have the moral equipment to manage myself however it may go, or whenever it may end. 

Written in 1/2005

Image: Actors and aulos player, Roman mosaic from Pompeii 

Mr. Denton on Doomsday

As a reference for Meditations 3.7

One of the best episodes, from one of the best shows ever.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5roiyb

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.7

Never value anything as profitable to yourself that shall compel you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains.

For he who has preferred to everything else intelligence, and the daemon and the worship of its excellence, acts no tragic part, does not groan, will not need either solitude or much company.

And, what is chief of all, he will live without either pursuing or flying from death, but whether for a longer or a shorter time he shall have the soul enclosed in the body, he cares not at all; for even if he must depart immediately, he will go as readily as if he were going to do anything else which can be done with decency and order, taking care of this only all through life, that his thoughts turn not away from anything which belongs to an intelligent animal and a member of a civil community.

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

We live in a society that quite rightly says we must have respect for ourselves, and we have television celebrities who make millions telling us all about how much that matters. I am then saddened by how we repeatedly miss the mark. I wonder how often we confuse respecting ourselves with gaining the respect of others, whatever the cost to ourselves may be.

I think of all the people I have known who have the most impeccable image of propriety in public, smiling for the camera, as they say, while in private they lie, cheat, steal, and treat other human beings as disposable commodities. It becomes the image of decency imposed upon a core of depravity.

I should hardly throw stones, because I have seen how easily I can be willing to sell my own dignity. I recall that episode of The Twilight Zone, “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”, where the town drunk will disgrace himself to entertain the bar patrons, only so they will toss him a free drink.

I know I have failed to keep my word because it would have been unpleasant or inconvenient. I have violated what I think is decent to cut corners. I have responded to others with hate instead of love, just because it was easier. I have doubted people I should trust since I questioned only myself, and I have trusted people I should doubt since it seemed to offer quick gratification. I have insulted others when I could not manage myself. I have said one thing and done exactly the opposite, thinking I could have it both ways.

Perhaps worst of all, I have assumed I can always retire behind a cloak of appearances, and be someone who gets what he wants, but who cannot bear to have others see him getting what he wants. Privacy triumphs over decency. A priest I once knew, one of the good ones, told me that we would never feel shame if we had nothing to hide, and we would hardly hide anything that is good about us.

I only need to stop playing, and to start living. Respect is not about being the cock of the walk, but about being able to look myself in the mirror without cringing. It doesn’t matter if I am alone or in a crowd, because I only need to follow the guidance of my own reason, and the integrity of my own character. Then there is no need for play acting, or pretending to be the victim.

Marcus Aurelius returns to the immanence of death time and time again, not because of any morbid obsession, but because he knows it is the ultimate test of human character. If it were to end right now, would there be regret? Would I try to change anything at the last moment? Would I have to be like the host who has unexpected guests, and must hurriedly tidy up before anyone can see the mess?

I will only fear death if my house is not in order. I can know that I am living well, in decency and order as wisdom and virtue demand, if I have nothing that is hidden away, nothing of which I need to be ashamed, and nothing that I have left undone. I can whistle as I walk down the street if I have shown respect to myself, and thereby shown respect to all of Nature. 

Written in 1/2005

Image: The Twilight Zone, "Mr Denton on Doomsday"

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.6

If you find in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, anything better than your own mind's self-satisfaction in the things which it enables you to do according to right reason, and in the condition that is assigned to you without your own choice—if, I say, you see anything better than this, turn to it with all your soul, and enjoy that which you have found to be the best.

But if nothing appears to be better than the deity which is planted in you, which has subjected to itself all your appetites, and carefully examines all the impressions, and, as Socrates said, has detached itself from the persuasions of sense, and has submitted itself to the gods, and cares for mankind—if you find everything else smaller and of less value than this, give place to nothing else, for if you do once diverge and incline to it, you will no longer without distraction be able to give the preference to that good thing which is your proper possession and your own.

For it is not right that anything of any other kind, such as praise from the many, or power, or enjoyment of pleasure, should come into competition with that which is rationally and politically or practically good. All these things, even though they may seem to adapt themselves to the better things in a small degree, obtain the superiority all at once, and carry us away.

But to you, I say, simply and freely choose the better, and hold to it. But that which is useful is the better. Well then, if it is useful to you as a rational being, keep to it. But if it is only useful to you as an animal, say so, and maintain your judgment without arrogance. Only take care that you make the inquiry by a sure method.

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

Few things in this life have given me greater joy and comfort than the opportunity to reflect on who I am, and why I am here. I have learned that I am given a mind so that I may discover what is true and good through my own reasoning. I can knowingly rule myself, and need not just blindly allow myself to be ruled.

At the same time, few things discourage me as much as the bickering and bullying that can sadly come with the life of the mind. Ideologues try to rigidly impose their own thinking, and demagogues confuse philosophy with sophistry.

This is perhaps one of the reasons I have always felt at home in the company of Stoicism. The good Stoic, the one who pursues not merely the name but the task, does not insist upon his own way, and he does not impose his own rules upon others. He may come to know with great depth and certainty how to distinguish between what is true and false, and between what is right and wrong, but he also understands that he cannot force anyone else to understand. He knows that, however long and hard the road may be, we must all come to understand for ourselves.

Bagehot, in The English Constitution, said that the Crown in a constitutional monarchy did not have the right to dictate or to demand, but rather “the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.” Though obviously in a rather different context, I suggest that the true philosopher has much the same rights. He will feel a duty to offer his guidance along the way, but he will not tell us what we must think or decide.

I know it seems an old and hackneyed phrase, but we do still use it for a reason: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Indeed, you can show a man the truth, but you can’t make him think. Socrates understood this.

Marcus Aurelius follows in this same spirit. If I can think of anything more beneficial than the Stoic life, then I should by all means follow that other life. He asks only that I be sure I have made the most reasonable decision. Much as St. Thomas Aquinas argued, make certain you always follow your conscience, but also make certain your conscience is always informed.

Do I have good reason to think that the life of pleasure, power, or praise will make me complete and happy? If so, life should be lived that way with total commitment. Do I have doubts, however, that this is really the best life? Have I noticed how these things may seem helpful at some times, but can also become deeply harmful at other times? Might I suspect that there are greater goods to guide the way? Then I must surely reconsider the priorities I have set for myself.

I only need to think this through for myself, and not merely do what the world tells me to do, in order to see that pleasure, power, or praise are inferior to virtue, and that they will only become good or bad when they are ruled by prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. My own honest estimation will show me the way.

Once I have made my decision, one way or the other, I must stand firm with it. Compromising the higher for the lower, or making excuses for the inferior at the expense of the superior, hardly shows a genuine respect for what I claim to value. If I wish to have it both ways, it becomes clear that I didn’t really know what I wanted to begin with. If I wish to sell out prudence for thoughtlessness, justice for greed, temperance for lust, or fortitude for equivocation, I am deeply confused about who is the rightful master.

It will be frustrating, but ultimately liberating, for me to make my choice. I must decide if I am a man ruled by character, or a beast ruled by gratification. 

Written in 1/2005

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.5

Labor not unwillingly, nor without regard to the common interest, nor without due consideration, nor with distraction; nor let studied ornament set off your thoughts, and be not either a man of many words, or busy about too many things.

And further, let the deity which is in you be the guardian of a living being, manly and of ripe age, and engaged in matter political, and a Roman, and a ruler, who has taken his post like a man waiting for the signal which summons him from life, and ready to go, having need neither of oath nor of any man's testimony.

Be cheerful also, and seek neither external help nor the tranquility that others give. A man then must stand upright, not be kept upright by others.

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

I have often had a tendency to take something I perceive to be good, but then foolishly pursue it to excess, so this advice from Marcus Aurelius on seeking directed and balanced purpose is very welcome in helping me to steer the proper course.

To stand upright for myself is to discover meaning and happiness in my own thoughts and deeds, and not as dependent upon my circumstances. My own character is never defined by what others will think, say, or do to me, but what I will think, say, or do myself.

I have sometimes misinterpreted this, and I have falsely assumed this must mean distancing myself from others, living in as solitary a way as I can, and being wary of any support or assistance that may be offered. This sort of misguided toughness has led me to confuse standing for myself and standing by myself, to think that self-reliance assumes isolation.

I forget too easily that I do not live in a vacuum. My own virtue will never flourish if I hide all those nice principles away in a box, and it will only be properly lived when I can engage with the world around me, when I can give of myself, and when I can work together with others. Cooperation is not the surrender of self-rule, but a means by which we can all assist each other to be our own masters.

I have also slipped into an opposite extreme, and though fired by a commitment to be of service, I find I have unwittingly made my own value contingent upon appreciation. I may know full well that I should do something because it is right, not because it is convenient, and that a person thrives through giving instead of receiving. Somehow my wires are still crossed, however, and I still come to expect some sort of external reward for my efforts. If this does not happen, as will so often be the case, I become frustrated and resentful, and I can slide right back into isolation.

Despite occasional outbursts of Irish temper, I tend to be a shy and sensitive soul. I always feel anxious in reaching out, and I feel deeply hurt when I am rejected. The only way I can keep myself on the right path is to constantly remember, in the most ordinary of daily tasks, that my good is in what I do, and not in what is done to me. I can then find that balance, where I should never run from others, while others should never run me.

Written in 10/2004

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.4

Do not waste the remainder of your life in thoughts about others, when you do not refer your thoughts to some object of common utility. For you lose the opportunity of doing something else when you have such thoughts as these: what is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own ruling power.

We ought then to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is without a purpose and useless, but most of all the over-curious feeling and the malignant. A man should use himself to think of those things only about which if one should suddenly ask, “What have you now in your thoughts?” with perfect openness you might immediately answer, “This or that”, so that from your words it should be plain that everything in you is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one that cares not for thoughts about pleasure or sensual enjoyments at all, nor has any rivalry or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which you would blush if you should say that you had it in your mind.

For the man who is such and no longer delays being among the number of the best, is like a priest and minister of the gods, using too the deity which is planted within him, which makes the man uncontaminated by pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, one who cannot be overpowered by any passion, dyed deep with justice, accepting with all his soul everything that happens and is assigned to him as his portion; and not often, nor yet without great necessity and for the general interest, imagining what another says, or does, or thinks.

For it is only what belongs to himself that he makes the matter for his activity, and he constantly thinks of that which is allotted to himself out of the sum total of things, and he makes his own acts fair, and he is persuaded that his own portion is good.

For the lot that is assigned to each man is carried along with him and carries him along with it. He remembers also that every rational animal is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to man's nature, and a man should hold on to the opinion not of all, but of those only who confessedly live according to Nature.

But as to those who do not live so, he always bears in mind what kind of men they are both at home and away from home, both by night and by day, and what they are, and with what men they live an impure life. Accordingly, he does not value at all the praise that comes from such men, since they are not even satisfied with themselves.

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

I have no idea how I survived it, but I once spent a good four years of my life obsessed daily with what someone else was doing and thinking.

I wanted to blame and accuse for what I thought was wrong, but I had to accept that I only needed to hold a mirror to myself. I should never condemn someone else for what I did. I began to see that people would be as they are, and I can do little about it. I will also be as I am, and I can do everything about it.

I had done exactly what Marcus Aurelius warned me against. I thought too much about the thinking of others, and I had paid absolutely no attention to my own thinking. Too much concern for what was outside of me made me neglect what was inside of me. It was a surrender of self-rule.

If I am to honestly examine myself, I see that it is my mind that is most fully my own, and that it is through the disciplined ordering of my own judgments that I can be my own master. All of my impressions, instincts, or passions may tug at me in this or that direction, and may ask me to run away with them, but it is my own estimation and choice that can harness all of those forces toward a life that is decent and worthy.

I suppose I have always known this in some sense, but I have clearly not always been living it. I think of how much time and effort I dedicated to the service of my body, my pleasure, my property, or my position, and how little time and effort I dedicated to cultivating my reason. I don’t mean merely the exercise of academic learning, which I perhaps did a bit too much of, but the daily practice of directed contemplation and orderly reflection on the priorities of living.

By all means, I should nourish and exercise the body to keep it healthy, but I should always dedicate my attention first and foremost to the good habits of my thinking. Everything else will depend upon this.

I have never really been able to develop any radical or clever methods for contemplation or meditation, but whenever I have been successful at this, I need to take my time and calm my nerves. I can certainly be doing something menial or relaxing at the same time, but my mind needs to untangle itself.

Now finding that interior peace and quiet will often meet with immediate opposition. Feelings and images will flash about and tempt me to distraction. I do know people who have built up the strength to swiftly nudge aside their passions when they are doing their thinking, and I admire them for it, but I have not yet managed to reach that stage. Instead I do something a little different. I catch hold of the feeling or image, and I gently pin it down.

I now look at it from different angles, and consider its different aspects. Though I may have been troubled by something that at first seemed frightening or harmful about it, I now deliberately look for something that is comforting or helpful about it. Instead of reacting to how much something may hurt, I try to calmly contemplate how much that same impression can be a tool for making myself better.

If I manage not to let myself be swept away through all this, I can arrive at a wonderful state of balance, where the pieces can fit together, and where I can discern just a glimmer of the power of my own judgment within the order of Providence. The exercise of my thinking can move beyond how something feels to what it means, and how it can provide purpose.

What I choose to think about will make a great difference to whether I am at peace or in conflict. My mind is often full of clutter, and it is often preoccupied with petty or shameful things. I need to follow the advice of Aurelius, and regularly ask myself whether the content of my thoughts is worthy of a man trying to be good. Like a muscle in the body, the practice of thought and choice becomes ever so much easier with regular practice.

As Aristotle suggested, habit is key, and I can become a good man by starting to do good things. Thoughts will perhaps seem to pop in and out of my awareness, but I do need to remember that I am ultimately the only one who decides what I will think about, and how I will think. What I allow my mind to be filled with will determine the merit of my living.

By reflecting seriously on how anything can be a means for wisdom and virtue, I can charge myself with a commitment to always rule my passions, but never to let them rule me. I can embrace that my life will be as fair and as just as I myself make it. I can find fulfillment in the simple act of loving my neighbor, because he and I are the same in nature.

Just as I must order my thoughts from within, I must also order what sort of people I choose to influence me from without. I cannot remove greed or malice from my own living if I am also seeking the recognition and approval of those who are themselves greedy or malicious. I am surely called to care for everyone, but I should never allow my own thinking to be inspired by just anyone. 

Written in 10/2004

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.3

Hippocrates, after curing many diseases, himself fell sick and died. The Chaldean soothsayers foretold the deaths of many, and then fate caught them too. Alexander, and Pompey, and Caesar, after so often completely destroying whole cities, and in battle cutting to pieces many ten thousands of cavalry and infantry, themselves too at last departed from life. Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration of the universe, was filled with water internally and died smeared all over with mud. And lice destroyed Democritus, and other lice killed Socrates.

What does all this mean? You have embarked, you have made the voyage, and you have now come to the shore. Get out.

If indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, not even there. But if to a state without sensation, you will cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel, which is as much inferior as that which serves it is superior: for the one is intelligence and deity, while the other is earth and corruption.

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

I was once told that young people behaved like fools because they didn’t fear death enough, and that old people behaved like fools because they feared it too much. Though I will sometimes get funny looks for saying it, I’ve always thought that Stoicism has a very healthy sense of life and death, one that finds the balance between the vain pride of assuming I am immortal on the one hand, and the morbid horror of dancing with the reaper on the other.

I should hardly fear either living or dying, because each gives a necessary context for the other. Beginnings, middles, and endings ought to proceed naturally into one another. If I have lived well I should be quite glad to die well, and only if I have lived poorly will I shudder at the prospect of dying poorly.

I am well advised to always have my kit packed and ready at a moment’s notice. If I don’t feel ready to disembark from the ship to the shore, maybe I am afraid that I squandered the voyage.

I have my own thoughts on the question of life after death, but I make it a point not to bore others with the details of those musings. I also deliberately bracket the question for myself in a very practical sense, in that I try to live in a way where it would make no difference whether or not I will go on to another existence. I do this not because I think the question unimportant, but rather because it helps me to consider doing good for its own sake, and not merely for the promise of some later reward.

I see something similar in what Marcus Aurelius has to say here, which in turn mirrors the words of Socrates at the end of Plato’s Apology. If there is indeed another life, one where my individual awareness will continue, then I can see this as a way to continue to live closer to what is Divine. If there is no life beyond this one, and my individual awareness will cease, I will no longer be troubled by the weakness of the body, and in that way too I will be closer to what is Divine.

I should never worry myself about death, because whether it is followed by something or by nothing, it can always remind me of the importance of living well. 

Written in 10/2004

Image: Adriaen van Utrecht, Vanitas—Still Life with Bouquet and Skull (1642)

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.2

We ought to observe also that even the things that follow after the things that are produced according to Nature contain something pleasing and attractive.

For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts that thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating.

And again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit.

 And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things—though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should examine them severally—still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by Nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the Universe, there is hardly one of those that follow by way of consequence which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure.

And so he will see even the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than those which painters and sculptors show by imitation; and in an old woman and an old man he will be able to see a certain maturity and comeliness; and the attractive loveliness of young persons he will be able to look on with chaste eyes; and many such things will present themselves, not pleasing to every man, but to him only who has become truly familiar with Nature and her works.

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

Over the years, this has become not only one of my favorite Stoic passages, but one of my favorite bits of writing ever. There is something wonderful about the language here, and that descriptiveness helps to highlight what can truly make things pleasant, attractive, and beautiful.

What I may or may not find appealing will ultimately depend on what I find most valuable in life. If I make pleasure the standard of my life, then I will be drawn to what excites the passions. If I make wealth the standard of my life, then I will be drawn to the thrill of acquisition. If I make honor the standard of my life, then I will be drawn to display and ostentation.

Yet if I choose to order my life around Nature, I can admire something not because it satisfies my lust, my greed, or my arrogance. I can perceive it as attractive simply because I recognize the effects of it doing what it is made to do, of fulfilling its own distinct part in the order of all things joined together. The beauty is in the evidence of its function and purpose, however unappealing it may seem in other ways.

Old age need never be repulsive, and youth need never be titillating. Each reveals through its actions what makes it noble in its own way. An earthworm is no less glorious than a sunset, or a tall oak more precious than a patch of moss.

While others call them filthy creatures, rats with wings, and diseased vermin, I have always enjoyed pigeons in the way Marcus Aurelius describes. The pigeon is not a peacock or an eagle, and is hardly admirable for its vibrant colors or its fierce strength. They may be pesky, a bit dirty, and unassuming, but they get the job done. I enjoy the sounds they make, the flapping of their wings, how they find comfort in swirling groups, and the way they bob and tilt their heads.

I once followed a girl around like a puppy because everything about her physical appearance and her social charms seemed irresistible. It did not occur to me that the mere cultivation of image was hardly beauty, and that real appreciation for another person should came through the measure of Nature, through the cultivation of character. Show me the consequences of a kind and noble soul, and you’ve shown me real beauty. 

Written in 9/2004

Boethius, The Consolation 1.2

. . . Happy is that death which thrusts itself not upon men in their pleasant years,

yet comes to them at the often repeated cry of their sorrow.

Sad is it how death turns away from the unhappy with so deaf an ear,

and will not close, cruel, the eyes that weep.

Ill is it to trust to Fortune's fickle bounty, and while yet she smiled upon me,

the hour of gloom had well-nigh overwhelmed my head.

Now has the cloud put off its alluring face,

wherefore without scruple my life drags out its wearying delays.

Why, O my friends, did you so often puff me up, telling me that I was fortunate?

For he that is fallen low did never firmly stand.

— from Book 1, Poem 1

With sadness can come despair, and with despair can come a loss of the will to live. Suffering becomes so savage in it intensity that the very cessation of human existence itself can seem preferable to struggling any further. The agony may be compounded by the fact that we might feel ready for death, but death does net seem ready to take us.

I have sadly known the feeling, and I have also learned to recognize it in others. It seems like more than anyone should ever have to bear, though the good I have somehow managed to extract from it is a far greater willingness to feel empathy for the pain in others. If you have the dubious distinction of ever having felt so low, you will surely never again be able to easily ignore or dismiss someone else’s misery.

When I was working in social services, I would regularly help out with a support group for clients who had suffered great personal loss. I recall one fellow who seemed to be in much the same state of mind as the one Boethius writes about. He was not only in the advanced stages of illness, but he had lost all of his income, and been abandoned by most everyone he had considered a friend. On a particular day he seemed even more weighed down than usual, and he expressed how he had an overwhelming sense that he wanted his life to end, even as it also made him feel deeply ashamed that he was thinking in this way.

Another participant immediately spoke up, and suggested that it was surely just a matter of willpower, of facing the pain with conviction and moving on from the disappointments. It would eventually get better, she said.

I know her words were meant to be helpful, but the look on the man’s face spoke volumes. It wasn’t that he lacked willpower, or that he didn’t want to face the pain and get over the loss, or that he didn’t desperately hope it could get better. He simply didn’t know how to do these things. Wishing harder, or being tough, or ignoring the pain would not make it all go away.

I can’t simply tell someone in agony to stop feeling it. It is not only the presence of suffering, but the sense that there is no meaning or purpose behind it all, and that all the things in life that seemed to provide security are now completely unreliable. Good luck simply seems to have become bad luck, with no discernible rhyme or reason. One feels betrayed by circumstances.

I could tell the man that I understood, but I would hardly blame him if he didn’t believe me. I myself had been advised time and time again to stick it out, and that everything would finally clear itself up.

In the end, the only way I ever found to make any of it better was to rebuild entirely. Yes, I had fallen, and yes, I had not been standing on a firm foundation. But maybe the problem wasn’t with what the world was doing, but with the way I was thinking about what the world was doing. Perhaps I was only seeing what was bad because I hadn’t been looking for what was good, in the right way and in the right places.

The process Boethius will soon undergo in the text is, I suspect, the same one that any of us must undergo to start making things right. It entails a serious reevaluation of priorities. 

Written in 2/2015

Image: Philosophy visits Boethius, 12th century manuscript.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.1

We ought to consider not only that our life is daily wasting away and a smaller part of it is left, but another thing also must be taken into the account, that if a man should live longer, it is quite uncertain whether the understanding will still continue sufficient for the comprehension of things, and retain the power of contemplation which strives to acquire the knowledge of the divine and the human.

For if he shall begin to fall into old age, perspiration and nutrition and imagination and appetite, and whatever else there is of the kind, will not fail; but the power of making use of ourselves, and filling up the measure of our duty, and clearly separating all appearances, and considering whether a man should now depart from life, and whatever else of the kind absolutely requires a disciplined reason, all this is already extinguished.

We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them ceases first.

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

I have very fond memories of my great-grandfather. He would sing me Irish songs, tell me the most thrilling stories about his youth in Belfast, and reminisce about how he met my great-grandmother while traveling about England on his motorcycle. I especially remember the smell of his aftershave, and how he taught me to use silly putty to copy the comics from the Sunday newspaper. Mutt and Jeff was always his favorite.

Whenever he did something forgetful or foolish, my Nana would cry out, “Oh Huey!” He would turn to me with a grin, and say, “Ah, the mind is always the first to go with age!”

I hardly believed him, because I only noticed that older people appeared physically weaker, would lose their breath so easily, and had quite the time keeping up with my darting about here and there. His mind, however, seemed quite sharp, even as the frame of his body seemed worn and tired.

Decades after he passed away, I am beginning to understand what he meant. He had joked about it, as he did about most anything, but I suspect he saw how the clarity of his thinking was not what it used to be.

Though I am still quite younger now than he was then, I can sense something similar in myself. My thinking becomes sloppier, I forget what I should remember, and I make the most ridiculous errors of judgment. When I was younger, I made those mistakes because I was fiery and stubborn. Now I make them because I am slow and dull.

I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

When I was young, I was foolish. I pursued the wrong trade, and I fell in love with the wrong girl. I will pay the price for both of those blunders until the end. In trying to turn myself around, and in striving to make something worthwhile of myself, I have also hesitated, made excuses, and put off what must be done. Regret in itself is pointless, but it does become worthy when it is a means for turning wrong into right, for fixing what I have broken.

There is never any guarantee that I have more time to make any good of those regrets. Yet the burden of age is not only that I will die, as much as I might want to deny it, or that I am getting weaker in my body, though they tell me there are apparently miracle pills for all of that.

The real burden of age is that my thinking itself becomes dull and hazy. The end of life for my body is hardly the point; the clarity of my mind is the key. Each day of procrastination and lazy excuses is a day of waste.

I saw my great-grandfather on a Sunday afternoon, and we watched a football game together. As was so usual way back then, the Patriots lost. He had a crippling stroke later that week, and the next time I saw him he seemed unaware of who I was, and he could not speak. They tied him to a bed or to a chair until his body died a year later. His soul had long been gone. Some company made quite a few bucks from maintaining a corpse.

I am myself a man sick in body. I was a bit surprised when fancy doctors told me that I had already gone through a few heart attacks, and that I was regularly suffering small strokes. I had always assumed it was just exhaustion, indigestion, or my usual bad mood. What the doctors told me worried me far less than the realization that my thinking was lagging well behind of my living.

Wise people always said I should never put off until tomorrow what I could do today. I get it now. I also get that it isn’t just about having a living body, but also about taking every opportunity I have to exercise a healthy mind. 

Written in 12/2016

Image: Leonardo da Vinci,  Self Portrait in Old Age (1512)

Stoicism and Existentialism

I recently ran across a curious soul asking about what it meant to be Stoic.

Here was an answer he received:

"We create our own meaning and purpose."

No. Good God, no. And no again. That isn't Stoicism. We discover our own meaning and purpose. We hardly create it.

I respect a man who wishes to be an Existentialist, and I would never deny him his choice. But please, let's not confuse Stoicism and Existentialism. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.17

Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment.

And, to say all in a word, everything that belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, philosophy.

But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything.

And besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from there, wherever it is, from where he himself came.

And, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to Nature, and nothing is evil which is according to Nature.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2 (tr Long)

My own temperament can be subject to intense melancholy, so once I am reminded how frail, confused, and temporary my life is, I am easily prone to despair. That is the path I took too many times in the past, when the recognition that everything seemed like vapor would leave me only with sadness.

Stoicism offers me another path. I don’t need to wallow, nor do I need to deny that there is pain, or that life is so easily built on illusions, or that my existence is passing. Instead of succumbing to passion, or trying to excise it, I can also try to understand what all of this may mean, and to discover that there is purpose and beauty in even those things that appear the most fragile and delicate.

To say that philosophy is the solution will tempt the cynical and sneering man to protest. I spent many years in the formal study of philosophy, and many more years teaching in the academic world. I have seen people turn philosophy into a career for the pursuit of status and recognition, and I have seen philosophy become a means for trying to appear impressive. I am certain this is not what Marcus Aurelius is referring to, because these things are just another expression of vanity.

No, philosophy is not the act of pontificating about grand theory, but rather that critical point where thinking meets living. I have been given a time and a place on this earth to exist in, and a mind to make sense of it. Philosophy is when I embrace the opportunity to have these two things join together.

I attend rightly to my guiding spirit when I respect the power of my awareness and conscience to steer a safe course. I am not the master of the world, but I am the master of myself, through my own judgments and choices. My circumstances are beyond my power, but my response to them is completely within my power. What is good for me, or bad, for me, will depend entirely on what I decide I will make of whatever may happen.

Marcus Aurelius had just offered us a few guidelines for the life lived well, for an existence free from worry and violence, and he reiterates them here. I should rise above being frustrated with the world. I should not let pleasure or pain rule me. I should always, in things both big and little, remember the very purpose of the virtuous life. I should be absolutely dedicated to integrity. I should never allow my life to be determined by what others may or may not do.

But what about death and decay? The Stoic learns that death is not an evil. Just as a day will pass or a season will change, things come together, they come apart, and they then come together again into new things. In this way, Nature continually plays itself out in all its glory, the many parts in their many distinct ways serving the whole. I can certainly appreciate the beauty of this in the world around me, and I must now only accept that same beauty within myself. 

Written in 7/2015

Image: Harmen Steenwijck, Vanitas (c. 1640)