Stoicism for a Better Life – Weekly exercise (March 14, 2021)

Hello there,

For this week’s exercise, I will seek some inspiration from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations IV 16: 

“Within ten days you will seem a god to those to whom you are now a beast and an ape, if you will return to your principles and the worship of reason.”

We all make mistakes. Daily. We all act out of character. Daily. And try as we may, given that we exist in these fallible bodies, we act in non virtuous way all the time… more often than we are virtuous if we can be honest with ourselves. Does this make us bad people? No.

As Stoics we have no conception of time, in that, the past is the past and unchangeable, the future is the future and is unknowable, and they are both in the domain of that which is not in our control. The present is the only point in time we can actually think and act, and this present moment goes on as long as we exist. From our perspective it is eternal, for when I no longer have a present moment (when I die) I will not be able to observe this lack of present moment.

No matter what you did in the past (“good” or “bad”) it is in the past and gone. All you need to be virtuous is to be morally good and virtuous right now. That’s it, that’s all. So at any point when you feel like you are being decrepit, you just have to make a good virtuous decision in the next moment and you are virtuous! It’s that simple. As a practical exercise this week, try consciously to live one moment at a time and make good virtuous decisions in the moment as often as you can. When you falter, no problem, because it does not change your objective. In the next present moment, just focus on being virtuous. 

I can promise you this will actually make you feel better, more joyful and present, and will take a load off your back. We ten to try and tackle so much in our day. For a change, just focus on nothing other than being a good person in the moment. It is freeing and rewarding.

Anderson Silver