Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Marcus Aurelius: Whatsoever is material, doth soon…
Whatsoever is material, doth soon vanish away into the common substance of the whole; and whatsoever is formal, or, whatsoever doth animate that which is material, is soon resumed into the common reason of the whole; and the fame and memory of anything, is soon swallowed up by the general age and duration of the whole.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Meditations. The reading beside it is ours.
Everything you can touch, own, admire, or worry about is temporary. Bodies return to matter. Buildings become dust or are rebuilt. Names fade from memory. Even the stories we tell about ourselves are eventually absorbed by time. Marcus does not use this fact to make life meaningless. He uses it to free us from clinging. If you know the new car, the job title, the photograph, and even your reputation are passing through, you can enjoy them without asking them to make you permanent. You can also lose them without believing you have lost yourself. The internet invites us to preserve everything: every thought, image, achievement, and outrage. Nature keeps offering a different lesson: let things move. Today, hold your possessions and your public image a little more lightly. Put your effort into the kind of character that is valuable even when no record remains.
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