Skip to main content

Marcus Aurelius dies


Marcus Aurelius [Source]
I will die soon.  Even the Emperor of mighty Rome is ultimately a feeble human being whose body will be consumed by the flames of time.  Nothing will remain after that.  Nothing.  Nothing but the earth.  The earth will cover us all.  Then the earth too will change.  And the things that result from the change will continue to change too.  What is there to be priced in this world of transitoriness?

Be good.  Do good to your fellow creatures.  Nothing else really matters.  Fame will mean nothing ultimately.  Everyone who remembers you after your death too will die one day.  Those who succeed them too will follow them soon.  Memories of you will be extinguished totally.  Even if there were means by which you could make the memories eternal, what would you gain?  What can anything mean to the dead?  Meaning itself has no meaning once you are dead.

Augustus is lost to history.  His court is lost.  So are his wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, Agrippa, Areius, Maecenas,  their physicians and their sacrificing priests.  Not only the individuals, but whole races are lost to history.  Where is Pompeii’s race today?

Even the gods cannot save history.  They cannot change history.   Neither the pride of Alexander nor the indolence of Diogenes is my way. 

I will die soon.  I will pass into nothingness.  But I will die happily that I had a heart that was made wise through the right measure of pain and anxiety, fear and despair.  Without my helplessness, without my awareness of my helplessness as a human being, I would not have made the space in my heart for the generosity that I valued much.  It is in giving that I got what I wanted.

Now I’m giving up my life.  Happily.



Note: Marcus Aurelius [26 April 121 – 17 March 180 CE] was the Emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 CE. The above lines are adapted from his book, Meditations.  
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 16, 2015 at 1:43 PM

    Philosophical post. The emperor earned a peaceful death with no regrets; something that is difficult to earn even for one who is perched so high.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 16, 2015 at 1:55 PM

      He was the genuine philosopher-king that Plato would have loved though Aurelius did not approve of Plato's abstract quests.

      Delete
  2. Roohi BhatnagarApril 16, 2015 at 2:49 PM

    Nothing remains, so true, still most people don't get this! May those who are lost soon gain the wisdom. Let us do our parts and be generous and be good and break this cycle.. No regrets :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 16, 2015 at 4:24 PM

      Wisdom is very rare and you know it, Roohi. The very realisation is great...

      Delete
  3. ManiparnaApril 16, 2015 at 10:30 PM

    Death is inevitable. We all shall leave this earth one day. But, I too, believe that what remains is only a person's deeds, the better they are, the more nicely she/he will be remembered.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 16, 2015 at 10:34 PM

      Aurelius went beyond, Maniparna. Unconditional goodness is what he advocated.

      Delete
  4. AnonymousApril 17, 2015 at 1:05 AM

    Beautifully written ... we can make the best use of present and be kind to all

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 17, 2015 at 6:30 AM

      Thanks. Yeah, life can be a simple affair if we wish....

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more