Meditations #1

 Over the now way too many years of this blog I've, in addition to my daily ill-considered musings, have occasionally tackled more thematic challenges: the daily commentary on Proust's Remembrance of Things Past; a year-long reflection on faith; and three seasons of the Discography (although, to be fair, that is a team effort). With that in mind, I'm not certain that I want to embark on another lengthy thematic quest, but maybe I'll just start tinkering and see what it goes. As I've discussed, part of this physical struggle is that it has left me a little weary - and the drugs, while helping, seem to have left me a little unfocused (or maybe I've just gotten old all of a sudden). Or maybe I just need to make a more concerted effort to work harder and to stay more focused. Hmmm. If I were going to undertake another longer thematic discussion the obvious place would be to reflect upon the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Partially, the other day, 26 April to be exact, was his 1900th birthday. More importantly, this would be another opportunity to reread the Meditations, one of my favorite works (in fact, when Pedro from the Food Shelf pointed out the other day that it was Marcus's birthday I ignored all of the many things that I needed to do that day and gave myself over hours of re-examining the Meditations). As I've pointed out, I think there are exactly three works that I think have made me a better person (or at least gave me the tools to be a better person): the Qur'an, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and the Meditations. For those of you unfamiliar with the Meditations, and, seriously, you should feel a tremendous sense of personal shame, these are reflections that Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself when he was Roman Emperor. Marcus was out on the perimeters of the empire with the army, and he would retreat to his tent of an evening and writing the notes and reflections that would become what we know as the Meditations. 

Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses. This means that the longest life and the shortest amount to the same thing. For the passing minute is every man's equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours. Our loss, therefore, is limited to that one fleeting instant, since no one can lose what is already past, nor yet what is still to come - for how can he be deprived of what he does not possess?

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Two

There was a time - and it's hard to believe that a time like that every existed - when I used to assign my students the Meditations. I've talked about constructing a class around the Meditations here at Champlain, but administrators and my colleagues look at me like a lunatic, which, of course, only makes me want to do it all the more. I've long proposed that if you did nothing other than focus on Book Two of the Meditations you'd, by definition, become a better person. Of course you should read all of it, but Book Two (essentially the second chapter; the Meditations is actually quite short) would give you the tools you would need to be a better person. The passage above is one of my favorites, and I still remember reading it for the first time. One of the similarities between Islam and the stoicism that Marcus Aurelius championed is the need to live an intentional, logical life, to consider the implications, the potential, for good or ill, the weight, of every moment. One thing that makes that possible is to understand that all you possess is that moment. How many people do you know who are crushed (sometimes, obviously, quite legitimately) by the events of the past - and are frozen into inactivity by the thought of what might happen in the future; in the end, you don't possess the past or the future. Yes, you should consider how the past might have shaped you, what you've learned from it - and you should definitely plan for the future - but to get to either of them you have to go through this moment. So, when you pass, Marcus reminds us, all you can actually lose is this moment.