As Often As You Can, Stand.

The fifth meditation from book three of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorites. I thought it might be fun to dive into this meditation and move through it, line by line, to see what sort of value we can get out of it. Let's start with the meditation as translated by Gregory Hays in 2002.  

"How to act:

Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings.Don’t gussy up your thoughts.No surplus words or unnecessary actions.Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness.Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others.To stand up straight—not straightened."

Starting with the first line:

“Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings.”

This makes sense, doesn’t it? We don’t want our actions to be actions we take because we are being forced to, nor should they be taken with selfish motivations. When we act, we should act freely and with the benefit of others in mind or, at least, freely and with something other than ourselves alone in mind. And here I think “ourselves” would mean, our emotional desires.

Take breakfast for example: our emotional desire might be a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with a whip cream smiley face and strawberry eyeballs, but is that a good decision to make when we know the value of maintaining a healthy diet and taking care of our bodies? Surely it is not.

Does that mean succumbing to desires is always bad? No. We’ve never covered Book One of the meditations because it’s essentially a list of thank yous to people in Marcus’s life, but one of those thank yous, I cannot remember to whom it was written, and I’m paraphrasing, went, “I’m thankful that whenever I gave into my desires, that I was quick to recover.”

So, perhaps there is a sort of managed interplay going on between our emotions and our logical minds when we know that stack of chocolate chip pancakes is the exception, not the rule. But we certainly know that not even Marcus, ever the teacher, thought it was possible to be perfect in this regard. You’ll fail, you’ll recover, and you’ll continue the effort moving forward.

"Don’t gussy up your thoughts"

Don’t over-aggrandize your thoughts, keep them simple, keep them straight forward. Don’t make yourself out to be, in your own mind, more than you are. Cut through the fluff and think in a way that is as reflective of reality as is possible. Separate the signal of importance from the noise of emotion and self-aggrandizement.

"No surplus words or unnecessary actions."

I don’t recall exactly where I heard it but a long time ago, maybe twenty years or so, someone said to me, or I heard it in a movie or read it in a book, “Never say anything that doesn’t add value to the conversation.”

I’ll be the first to admit I fail to do this frequently, but it is a nice aim to have. Before you speak, ask yourself, “is what I’m about to say going to provide any value to the conversation I’m about to join?” If the answer is no, then why are you saying it? Is it in service to your ego? Do you want others to know how smart you are? Do you fell compelled to say something in order to fit in? If you can avoid saying things that are without substance, you may become known as someone who only speaks when there is something worth speaking to. That would be a good thing for the future, sure, but it would also be a good thing in the present because you wouldn’t be confusing important issues with vapid or useless thoughts, and you wouldn’t be participating in conversation which were not important. That doesn’t mean a bit of fun useless banter can’t be enjoyed from time to time but, like everything else that isn’t the goal of Stoicism, in moderation.

"Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness."

There is a chaotic child inside of all of us. And it can feel, by suppressing it, that we are killing some part of ourselves. To become, in Marcus’s words, “an adult” really can feel like you’re smothering some sort of innocence within yourself; some sort of whimsy or wide-eyed wonder. But this is what the world requires, it requires people who show up with purpose, and who believe it is their duty to do so. You’re not just waking up to pass time, you’re waking up to participate, to make change, to do your human job; you’re waking up to discover your internal honey bee and to inhabit it fully for the sake of your community, for the sake of your family and those who depend on you, and for the sake of future generations. Everything we do that matters must be thought about in such a way that we are inspired to do our best in doing those things.

Of course, as I say immediately following most of these edict-sounding pieces of advice from Marcus, we can’t be perfect. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve wrapped my night up with a Pixar movie, or a Hayao Miyazaki film, why, just last night, I bookmarked The Sea Beast on Netflix. I watch cartoons and animated films all the time, and I find them to be a comfort in a serious life. Perhaps Marcus would have thought this a childish waste of time but, as I’ve said in other volumes, we know things about the human mind today that Marcus didn’t—things that Marcus couldn’t have known. It is important that our Stoic practice be allowed to mature and change in ways that respect modern knowledge—not modern opinions, mind you, but modern knowledge.

There’s this great scene from my childhood that my mother told me once, I’ll share it with you now. We were on vacation, somewhere, I don’t recall where, and my step-grandfather, Walter Pickett, who was a Superior Court judge in Connecticut and the son of the same, was sitting at the edge of his hotel bed very early in the morning while the rest of us were asleep. My mother woke to the soft glow and low volume of the television set; but also of the quiet chuckles of my grandfather. Walter was a stoic man in many ways, a Yale graduate, a judge, a man’s man who lived by the book. Or, at least, that is how I remember him as a child and my mother reinforces this memory. He was a serious man who thought about serious things and he didn’t have time for games. But in that moment, there he sat, illuminated by cable television in a pre-dawn hotel room, one sock on, one sock off, getting ready for the day, watching and giggling at, a bugs bunny cartoon.

All minds need a break, even the most stoic ones, and today we know that these sort of lapses in intellectual severity give our brains time to relax and breathe and that’s important so, yes, show up like a soldier and stand your post, but when you get home, it’s probably okay to play a game, or read a comic book, or do something silly and without much intrinsic purpose—your mind needs that sort of thing sometimes.

"Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others."

Marcus seems to be asking us to become islands here, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, we do want to construct a character so strong that even if everyone in our lives abandoned us, even if we were reduced to abject poverty, forced to live on the street, that even under those circumstances we could maintain our stoic practices, we could be so resilient and self-sufficient that even the worst case scenario couldn’t rock our constitution; couldn’t rob us of our happiness. There is value in all of that, of course, and I don’t think anyone could argue that, but it is a bit like the conundrum of avoiding falling in love because you don’t want to risk the potential hurt of your partner falling out of it. I will say that in practicing gratitude—gratitude for being alive, for your good fortune to draw breath and participate in this grand experience of life, one can show up cheerful to almost anything. And one can become so strong that they don’t require help from anyone; but that last bit, to not require the serenity supplied by others—I’m less confident there. The idea of finding serenity only in yourself is alluring, but I don’t know how practical it is. Humans are social creatures, and friendships and relationships are important to us at a fundamental level, so the idea of not requiring others to be cheerful, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t know that one can be truly cheerful, fully cheerful, without relationships; I’m afraid we’re a bit too human for that.

"To stand up straight, not straightened"

Now this last bit speaks to me loudly. There’s this modern idea that no one gets anywhere on their own, you’ll hear many people say “you didn’t build that thing on your own; pulling yourself up by your bootstraps isn’t real.” But I’m not so sure. I think there’s a certain level of character we are all required to establish within ourselves that frees others of the need to prop us up. Other can prop us up, surely, and they do, but to lack the metaphorical spine and muscle to stand on our own two feet is almost unforgivable. To rely on others to do our standing for us, to fight our fights for us. That to me is, again, nearly unforgivable.

Of course this is metaphorical, some people physically cannot stand, but in their minds? In their minds they are as capable of resoluteness as any other man or woman and I feel it is important to train that part of ourselves, as Marcus did, so that we are an ally to our fellow citizens and not a burden. Is there anything worse, when assessing the character of a man or woman, when someone is capable of doing the thing themselves, than lazing about such that others must do the thing for them? I don’t think so.

Marcus wants us to stand on our own two feet whenever we’re able, and to be able as frequently as possible, and I think that's a noble ideal to aim for.