Simple ideas have survived the test of time. Or have they? In my on-and-off attempts to read Marcus Aurelius, I’ve encountered much allusion to Stoicism, the same guiding principles we hear of today. Impressively, Marcus Aurelius produced his writings in the 2nd century of our era while assuming the throne of the Roman empire.
I paraphrase only small excerpts he documented in his introspective writings Meditations, which parallel heavily with the fundamentals of the Stoic philosophy.
“Things” tend to “dissolve and resolve”, and are largely inconsequential.
The present moment is all you have; not the past, not the future. When you depart, the present is all you lose, for you can’t lose what you don’t have. It follows, it doesn’t matter if you live 10 or 10000 years.
Corollary: do project, affect, and act as if life were to cease at any moment. Be virtuous now.
Don’t mind the insolent feedback. Pay no attention to vulgarisms, lust, vice, malicious commentary, or necessarily to others' saying or doing. Rather, mind your own reason and intellect. Intently proceed upon your path.
The world turns. Life is an opinion. Things are but a speck of dust, lost in the ephemeral moment.
Do live by own reason and intellect. But avoid excesses. Don’t pursue nor escape. Don’t seek solitude nor crowds. Focus on the moment and the exercise of own faculties to a virtuous end. As such, you will not care for the precise interval of your existence and be happy.
Eliminate the superfluous, in what you say, in what you do. Eliminate the imaginations.
There is no need to seek refuge in an exotic location or a natural retreat. This is, in fact, “vulgar” [if we’re to accept the translation literally]. You have the full capacity to recollect and remobilize your faculties in your head. That is to say, you can restore calm and order by virtue of a mental retreat.
Don’t live in vain hope or fantasy. Act, while there is an opportunity.
There is something in the idea of the present moment. Rather than worryingly harvesting memories for the “right kind” of life, which creates dependence on longevity and reminiscence, acknowledge that memories are but a snapshot of the past that doesn’t really exist. Information is contained in the memories, yes, but in addition to a lot of noise. An overwhelming majority of noise, I would say.
Irrespective of own life span, when you depart, you have but the present moment and this memory snapshot. Don’t place weight on the snapshot, emphasize the moment and the exercise of reason, and you’ll live a meaningful and happy existence.
The notion of a mental retreat also intrigues me. I do fantasize about a certain kind of environment, to connect with the surroundings in a certain way, to feel a certain force, to evoke certain visuals, to imagine myself in a particular contortion of 4-dimensional space. Is this but nostalgia?
Has any physical retreat calmed an emotional turbulence or inspired an epiphany to a significant extent beyond a mental sanctuary? Have the merits of a physical retreat altered between the 2nd and the 21st centuries?
However, I cannot contest the importance of avoiding excesses, not philosophically as a minimalist, not aesthetically as an observer, not mechanically as an organic creature.
Questions, comments? Connect.