Time is a point

Notes on Meditations 2.17

How we see the world determines how we act. Because philosophy influences our perceptions, it shapes who we are. When practiced well, it safely guides a life.

That is what Marcus Aurelius is trying to do here – see through the fog of life in order to live well.

2.17

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

And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and lasting fame is oblivion.

What then can guide a man?

One thing and only one, philosophy.

But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and unharmed, doing nothing without purpose, nor dishonestly 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 wherever he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is made.

But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each always changing into another, why should a man have any fear about the change and dissolution of all the elements?

For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.