"We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition."
In her collection of essays illustrating human connection during social distance, Zadie Smith mentions Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, especially its thoughtfulness on human connection, guided her mind and hand. "Nothing to be afraid of - we'll get through this, all of us, together," she wrote, except we were not together in our lockdowns. If our human connection is more significant than geography and beyond physical space - as Smith seems to believe - what is it?
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (April 26, 121 – March 17, 180) wrote Meditations towards the end of his life, and they might more aptly be called letters to self. They were never intended to be published, much less read, almost 2,000 years later. They are gnomic yet astoundingly timeless.
The writings, suspected to have been written during a period of ten years, lack narrative yet present coherent Stoic thinking: keep an eye on the greater unknowable and reduce needless suffering through understanding and kindness.
Aurelius begins with humility (he describes himself as "a male, mature in years, a statesman, a Roman, a ruler") and gratitude (he thanks everyone who passed on knowledge or influenced his character). His mention of his adoptive father (his uncle by marriage and then his father) is exceptionally gracious:
From my [adoptive] father: gentleness, and an immovable adherence to decisions made after full consideration; no vain taste for so-called honours; stamina and perseverance; a ready ear for anyone with any proposal for the common good; to reward impartially, giving everyone their due...
From Meditations, Book 1
The praise continues for several paragraphs. This self-knowledge (whether perceived or desired), as well as some of the particular traits he maintains he has—truth, realism, patience, and justice— made Aurelius a posthumous philosopher and core voice in the development of Stoic principles.
Equestrian statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius on Capitoline Hill, Rome. Learn more.The modern shorthand for Stoicism is well-known (a moral toughness and a rejection of pleasure), and, indeed, Aurelius writes, "the flesh you should disdain […] a mere network of blood and nerves."
More to the point, however, the heart of this particular Stoicism is that the connective tissue of life, nature, and eternity is more significant than flesh. Humanity (although he didn't use that word), timelessness, and virtues are supreme.
From Book 2:
We were born for cooperation, Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, and unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have seen that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong, and I have reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own - not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong. Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition.
From Meditations, book II
This concept of connectedness and Whole flows throughout Meditations and echoes thoughts of our connection to nature ("nature" meaning all existing things that are not human) espoused by Transcendentalists and even the modern environmental movement launched, in part, by Rachel Carson's assertion and proof of our inter-connection at the molecular level. Human interconnectedness flows and formulates art as individuals try to answer what makes us human, from the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, which portrays a single form to depict all humankind, to the poetry of Walt Whitman, who confidently proposed an atomic connection between humans, to the phalanx theory that underpinned most of John Steinbeck's novels.
Like these and many more, I believe all humans dance in and out of society as befits their needs, but no one is apart. What makes us human is our interconnectedness.
Marcus Aurelius continues:
Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or ten times that long, nevertheless remember that no one loses any life other than the one he lives, or lives any life other than the one he loses. It follows that the longest and the shortest lives are brought to the same state. The present moment is equal for all; so what is passing is equal also; the loss, therefore, turns out to be the merest fragment of time. No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?
So always remember these two things. First, that all things have been of the same kind from everlasting, coming round and round again, and it makes no difference whether one will see the same things for a hundred years or two hundred for an infinity of time. Second, both the longest-lived and years or the earliest to die suffer the same loss. It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if indeed this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.
From Meditations, book ii
It is astounding that a man with no scientific concept of the universe, solar system, or even Earth's roundness could create such an abstract concept of wholeness and eternity that is so all-encompassing.
He who sees the present has seen all things, both all that has come to pass from everlasting and all that will be for eternity: all things are related and the same. You should meditate often on the connection of all things in the universe and their relationship to each other. In a way all things are interwoven and therefore have a family feeling for each other: one thing follows another in due order through the tension of movement, the common spirit inspiring them, and the unity of all being.
From Meditations, bOOK vi
This connection exists during our conscious life and after that. Our consciousness is immaterial.
Either all things flow from one intelligent source and supervene as in one coordinated body, so the part should not complain at what happens in the interest of the whole—or all is atoms, and nothing more than present stew and future dispersal. Why then are you troubled? Say to your directing mind: 'Are you dead, are you decayed, have you turned into an animal, are you pretending, are you herding with the rest and sharing their feed?'
From Meditations, book ix
Marcus Aurelius died in 120 AD at the age of 58, and unfortunately, with his death, the curtain closed on the period of Pax Romana.
Sarcophagus of Marcus Aurelius in the mausoleum of the North Necropolis, ancient Olympos, Lycia, Turkey. That someone thought to publish his Meditations, humankind has been forever changed. American novelist Marilynne Robinson believed language creates a prism through which light passes. Meditations is the kind of book that leaves me cheering my forebears for creating and preserving the language that syndicated such light.
Marcus Aurelius wrote much that has been repeated and reclaimed. What he offers is remarkably similar to the thoughts of individuals who lived centuries later. Evidence that we are all connected by our similar human experiences?
