Meditations November 20, 2020

I have just finished reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, part of my self-imposed 101 books project.  I had purchased a copy a few years ago, based on the recommendation of my friend Carl, but I couldn’t get into it at the time.  Now, with nothing but time, I decided to dig in again, and what a goldmine it is!

Marcus Aurelius was considered one of the greatest Roman Emperors, but he was also a philosopher in the Stoic school. Meditations are his musings to himself, written in Greek, often while on a campaign in the dying days of Pax Romana.  Marcus continuously challenges himself on how to be a better man, a question that all leaders, and indeed all people, should explore.

What struck me is the similarity between Marcus’ principles and Buddhist dharma.  

Let’s begin with “everything changes”.  Marcus returns to this theme again and again, embracing change as part of nature and accepting death.  He goes even one step further, reiterating that as we are tiny specks in the continuum of time, it matters not whether we live one year or a hundred, because we will still be dead in the end and ultimately fall into obscurity.  (Of course, he didn’t!)

To this point, he invites us to imagine that we are now deceased and to view all our subsequent days as a gift to live in accordance with nature.  Given that life is brief, there is also an urgency; he says, “While you live, while you can, become good,” and “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last.”  Since life can be interrupted at anytime, we must live in a continual act of goodness.

Marcus uses a story to illustrate his point: To the actor who is dismissed from the stage and complains, “But I have not played my five acts, only three,” he responds, “True, but in life three acts can be the whole play.” 

Not only is life transient, so too are the stages of life, and we must accept that. “Only a madman looks for figs in winter: just as mad to hope for a child when the time of this gift is past.” 

Like the Buddha, Marcus talks about the need for a steadfast mind.  Retreat into yourself, he advises, as it is always available to you. (I swear I can feel him meditating!)  He refers to hindrances of the mind, that anxieties come only from internal judgments. To Marcus, life is a continual process of honing the mind.  He advises us to “See things for what they are.”  And he adds an extra perspective, that humans uniquely benefit from a rational mind, so we must follow reason in all things. (Leaders, are you listening?)

Another repeated theme is the harmony of nature and the existence of a world order, that everything is connected and that one must always consider the common good.  “What does not benefit the hive does not benefit the bee either.”

So much of Marcus’ Meditations is right out of the Eightfold Path playbook.  He talks about “right” acts and “right” path.  “If it is not right, don’t do it. If it is not true, don’t say it.”

And though it is the first of his twelve “books” that comprise Meditations, I will close with a recommendation to read his treatise on gratitude, a catalog of people who have influenced him throughout his life and why.  It is a moving reflection of the people who have made him him.  One of these days – soon – I will endeavor to take stock in the same manner and commit to paper my gratitude for the scores of people who have threaded their way into the fabric of my life and made it all the richer.

Reflections on a childhood November 7, 2020

This year, COVID has shattered lives for people all across the planet.  I was thinking the other day about the particular long-term repercussions for our children, who can no longer play with friends or participate in classroom learning.  Some of these children will have lost parents, aunts and uncles, or beloved grandparents to the disease.  Some will be victims of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse at the hands of their family members.  For many, whose parents have lost their jobs and source of income, there may be food insecurity and the threat of homelessness.  Surely most children have also internalized the fear of either contracting or spreading the disease, with constant mask-wearing and incessant hand-washing.  

This pandemic will be one of the defining features of their childhood, a time when the world stopped functioning, when stress soared, when existence seemed fragile.  And what of the murder of young black men and women at the hands of police?  Or the terror wrought by armed vigilantes and white supremacists, egged on by presidential provocation and rhetoric?  Or the threat of evacuation due to fires or hurricanes? Or even the threat to the rule of law and democracy in our country?  Surely our children sense that, too.

These ruminations led me to reflect on my own childhood and how incredibly safe it felt in comparison.  Yes, we boomers grew up with a lot of bad stuff: the continual threat of a nuclear war, the Cuban missile crisis, assassinations of three beloved leaders, and the Vietnam War, not to mention racial violence.  As kids, we saw all this on the nightly news, with Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley on a black-and-white TV.

But the truth is that my own childhood - as a white girl growing up in a middle class family in a small industrial town in southeastern Pennsylvania  - was incredibly stable.  I lived in the same house during my entire childhood, and I went to the same neighborhood schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.  My parents were kind to each other and never spoke harshly to us kids.  They never abused drugs or alcohol. They budgeted and saved their money.  My father had a good job as a structural engineer with Bethlehem Steel Corporation; my mother ran the household.  To my knowledge they never cheated on each other, and they stayed together for five decades until my mother passed away. 

I’m not saying it was a perfect existence.  It was a bit boring, one-dimensional, and far too conservative.  I always knew I wanted to fledge.

But last week I came to appreciate how very safe and secure I felt in my home with my family, in my particular neighborhood, in the United States, at that moment in time.  I am so very grateful for this childhood.  For me, on reflection, that stability is the foundation for all I have become.  Would that every child throughout the world could have the same.  

Wednesday night November 7, 2020

I hadn’t realized how stressful these past years had been until I crept under my covers on Wednesday night.  It was little more than 24 hours after the polls closed and election data were slowly dripping in, but I was confident that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would emerge as the winners.  Data from Nevada and Arizona were looking good and their full count would surely push him over the top to 270.  Many votes from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas were still waiting to be entered in Pennsylvania, and Georgia was still too close to call.  There, Stacy Abrams had worked her magic and the two Senate races would move to a run-off in January, determining the fate of the Senate.  

For four years our country has lived under the boot of a madman.  Our current president lacks the bandwidth, the curiosity, the introspection, the consistency, and the empathy required for leadership of a nation born of revolution for democracy.  We have lived on the cusp of fascism, as more and more governmental officials have bent to his will and the ugliness of hate and violence has been given free rein.

On Wednesday night, I exhaled.  I felt the coolness of my pillow and the breeze through the open window, the firmness of my mattress, the quiet of the night. I started to feel safe once again.