Meditations 2:14

While I was reading Book Two of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, entry 14 I summarized it like this: "The length of our life doesn't matter, the quality of it does." Marcus reminds us that a life can be three years or thirty, the only thing we lose is the life we are living. Feeding the light wolf ensures a life well lived, while feeding the dark wolf ensures the opposite. And since we don't have any more time in the past, and time in the future doesn't belong to us, the point Marcus is trying to make, if you ask me, is that when we live in accordance with Nature, when we die, we lose a life worth living.

Marcus Aurelius spends a lot of time contemplating death in his Meditations. This is obvious by the amount of times the brings it up. As I understand it, he wrote most of the entries in his journal in the last ten years of his life while he was away from Rome, waging wars. Death of his men, and his own death was probably very close to the top of his mind for most of those years. He says over and over that death is merely a change of state, nothing more than a transformation, or as I think of it, a continuation and a recycling. If you ask me, (and I assume you are asking me because you've made it this far in the reading and you're on my website) there is nothing after death. We just die and are either cremated or buried. I want to be buried in a regular pine box that decomposes relatively quickly so that my "parts" can be returned to the earth as quickly as possible. The only things that live on after I'm gone are the memories that people have of me.

So that being said, to live in accordancew with Nature, we need to keep in mind that we can't control the memories people have of us, we can't control our reputations, we can't control our legacies. Allow me to reiterate: we can't control what people think of us, especially after we're dead. All we can do is try to make the people in our lives feel good when they're around us, but as we've learned from "cancel culture," it takes only one person to say something negative about us and our legacy, or our reputations can be ruined. I don't write that to blame the person who speaks ill of us or calls us out or exposes something we did of which we shouldn't be proud, because maybe that person was right; I write it as a reminder that our legacy and reputations are out of our control, but what we can control is the way we show up in the world. And some days it's not easy to show up in a good way, some days it even feels impossible, but it is in our control.

Think about the legacy of Nature. Animals know how to be animals, and they do it for the sake of being an animal and for the sake of the humans that eat them. Trees know how to be a tree and they do it for the sake of being a tree, and of being in service to the animals that live, feed and hide in trees. Chipmunks, mountain lions, hippopotamuses, and parrots don't care about their legacy or about how they will be remembered, this is a lesson we could learn by paying closer attention to our relatives of other species.

Marcus' relationship with Nature seems to be one of dominion. He thinks in hierarchical terms, and why wouldn't he, he's the most powerful man of his time. This view was adopted by the Christians and other Eurocentric religions and cultures that came after the Roman Empire fell, but it's not a view I share with Marcus. I do agree with him that we should live a life in accordance with Nature, but my relationship with and to Nature is different than the one that Marcus has. However, with that being said, there are a lot of things we can glean from his teachings, his Meditations, that helps us have a more reciprocal relationship with Nature. His words remain unchanged, but the context differs.

Doing good for the sake of doing good by using the tools that have been bestowed upon us by Nature to improve our lives and the lives of the people around us is good enough. Not only is it good enough, it's our duty. Marcus reiterates time and again that man is a social animal and that we were created to help each other. In Marcus's view the hierarchy of nature starts with all the inanimate objects of the world at the bottom. On the next level are all the plants that grow from the inanimate objects like rocks and soil. On level three are the animals that feed on the plants, and feed on each other. Finally, on the fourth and uppermost level are human beings. Since there is no level above us (except for the Gods) man must have been created, in Marcus' view, for each other.

In Marcus's view the hierarchy of nature starts with all the inanimate objects of the world at the bottom. On the next level are all the plants that grow from the inanimate objects like rocks and soil. On level three are the animals that feed on the plants, and feed on each other. Finally, on the fourth and uppermost level are human beings. Since there is no level above us (except for the Gods) man must have been created, in Marcus' view, for each other.

In Marcus' view, living in accordance with Nature is living for, and in service of our fellow human beings (I think we also need to live in service of the "levels" below us). Living a life in service of others, helping our neighbours, helping a stranger, pulling over to the side of the road and checking on someone who drove into a snowy ditch, removing the snow at the end of your neighbours driveway after the plow goes by (thanks Will!), sharing a smile with a total stranger as you walk past them, holding the door for a stranger and anything else you can think of that helps another person that doesn't hurt anyone, is how we can lose a life worth living. We don't do it for the credit, we don't do it for rewards or recognition. We do it because it's the right thing to do. That's living a good life, in accordance with Nature.