Look within. Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape thee.
Hi folks! Been a while since I have written a diary for Readers & Book Lovers, and I have felt challenged this week to choose a subject for this series with enough meat to be worth dining upon. So many books have had an impact on me; some major, some slight. But the "classics," in the literal sense of that word, played a large role in shaping my outlook on life. I considered the Greek tragedies as a subject; Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles (in that order) had quite an impact on me.
But no single work of the Classical Age, not even The Iliad or The Odyssey, had a greater influence on me that the private meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
More below the fold:
My parents were (and are) readers. We did not have a television in the house until the mid-'60s, but shelves abounded. Filled with books. Among the books were a series of classic reprints, with hardcovers and fine lettering. The series included such diversity as Lady Chatterley's Lover and Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey. Without a television in the house, I systematically worked my way through every book on the shelves. Including those, and other weighty tomes like Churchill's World War II volumes. I read in a certain way. I do not read as an observer; I read as a participant. So books which are well written and engaging stay with me.
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
But few of these books affected me like the Meditations. I think, now, that there were several reasons for that.
First, the meditations, even though dry on the surface, were intensely personal. Marcus Aurelius did not write them for public consumption, unlike other classic works like those of Julius Caesar. He was not "putting his best foot forward"; he was reminding himself what was truly important.
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Second, I was raised in a "stoic" intellectual tradition, that of Christian Science. A religion which denies the importance of the tangible present, and insists on the importance of intangible virtue. Marcus Aurelius, while different, appealed to the same synapses which had been steeped in Mary Baker Eddy.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Third, my childhood was filled with chaos. Financial, alcoholic, social... The idea that I need not be filled am with emotional turmoil which matched the turmoil of my environment appealed to me.
We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
Fourth, life was not meant to be lived for ourselves, but for the good of all. Selfish ends were not what the world deserved from us.
It is fair to say that Marcus Aurelius, or more accurately, my interpretation of Marcus Aurelius, acted as a bulwark against the vicious winds and waves that buffeted my childhood. It is also fair to say that, as I transitioned from the child of alcoholics to an alcoholic teen and escaped, rather than looked inside, my inner "stoicism" became warped into something self-destructive. While I maintained a conviction which insisted on virtue for virtue's sake, I no longer had the ability to act on that conviction. Rather, I retreated from the world, and lived in denial.
This process took a long time. At the end, my stoicism had warped into a state in which I repeatedly accepted the unacceptable. Or, even worse, denied the unacceptable was even real. So, when the day came when I reached out for help, I needed to challenge what Marcus Aurelius had become for me. I remember the day when a valued mentor in the fellowship I joined to stay sober said to me "Just because you can take it, that doesn't mean you have to." And I began to come back to the true meaning of Aurelius' words.
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.
Yes, I am, to some extent, still a fatalist. We are, in the words of the '70s rock group, Kansas, "dust in the wind". But I remember, now, that I have a purpose. That to live a virtuous life, to feel content with myself, but clear-eyed as to my foibles and flawed, and always correctable, always seeking growth inside, is to live the only heaven that we, truly, know exists.
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Indeed.