Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Marcus Aurelius: As a pig that cries and flings when his…
As a pig that cries and flings when his throat is cut, fancy to thyself every one to be, that grieves for any worldly thing and takes on. Such a one is he also, who upon his bed alone, doth bewail the miseries of this our mortal life.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Meditations. The reading beside it is ours.
Marcus uses harsh imagery to confront a familiar habit: adding noisy protest to the pain of being mortal. The lesson is not that grief is shameful. Grief is love responding to loss, and it deserves tenderness. The point is that suffering becomes worse when we insist that life was obligated to spare us every ending, inconvenience, and disappointment. There is a difference between feeling heartbreak and feeding it with endless outrage at the fact that things change. In private, especially, we can become addicted to rehearsing our misery because it feels like staying loyal to what we lost. But life still asks something of us. Let yourself mourn; speak to someone; get help if sorrow is overwhelming. Then, when you can, stop making pain your entire identity. Today, allow one difficult feeling without turning it into a verdict on life.
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