Meditations #15

 What is evil? A thing you have seen times out of number. Likewise with every other sort of occurrence also, be prompt to remind yourself that is, too, you have witnessed many times before. For everywhere, above and below, you will find nothing but the selfsame thing; they fill the pages of all history, ancient, modern, and contemporary; and they fill out cities and homes today. There is no such thing as novelty; all is as trite  as it is transitory.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Seven

OK, so MA is being more than a bit of a down here, but, truthfully, it's hard to argue with him (and not simply because I have such a man crush on him). Of course, some of my agreement may be a reflection of my own immense frustration with my life at the moment. In my tiny apartment, surrounded by the ghosts of innumerable personal and professional failures, it's not hard to see everything as both trite and transitory. Or maybe - and in this case I guess I would be disagreeing with MA - this is an instance where all that matters of my perception of them (which, oddly, MA would completely agree with). I remember sharing my son's reflections on first reading the Meditations and that it helped him get out of his own head (and thus out of his own way). The other night I grabbed dinner with Mahmoud, one of my favorite former students (more on that later), and we talked about me popping over to Geneva (where he works) for Thanksgiving break. It's an incredibly kind offer on his part, and in many ways I feel I should say no, or at least put off the trip, but I also feel that I need to do something to shake things up, to get me out of my own head. Maybe life is trite because I've become trite.