Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Marcus Aurelius: The nature of the universe, of the…
The nature of the universe, of the common substance of all things as it were of so much wax hath now perchance formed a horse; and then, destroying that figure, hath new tempered and fashioned the matter of it into the form and substance of a tree: then that again into the form and substance of a man: and then that again into some other. Now every one of these doth subsist but for a very little while.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Meditations. The reading beside it is ours.
Marcus imagines the universe as wax continually reshaped: a horse, then a tree, then a person, then something else. The forms we become attached to are temporary arrangements of the same underlying material. This is a useful way to see both life and loss. Your body changes. Your career identity changes. The home you loved is sold. A child becomes an adult. Nothing is broken simply because it does not keep its previous shape. We suffer when we demand that a passing form remain fixed forever. That does not mean we should love people or places less. It means we should love them without the impossible demand that they never change. Today, notice one transition in your own life without calling it a betrayal of the past. Something is ending, perhaps, but something is also being formed. Your job is to meet the new shape with grace.
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