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Ep. 27: Rising Unwillingly · The Morning Stoic: The Untold Lives Behind Stoicism

• 0:00
  The Emperor of Rome is awake before he wants to be.
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  I imagine the room is cold, the way stone rooms are before the sun gets into them,
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  and I imagine heavy woolen blankets, still holding the warmth of his own body.
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  He is a man in his forties or fifties, and he has not slept well.
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  He rarely did.
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  This is Marcus Aurelius, and today's story is about one small,
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  very human moment: the moment before he gets up.
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  We often picture him as a marble bust, serene and finished.
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  But the man behind the bust, was often unwell.
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  George Long, in the biographical sketch that opens his translation,
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  says that as a boy Marcus lived such a hard, abstemious life that he injured his
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  health.
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  And the letters between Marcus and his teacher Fronto, as they're usually described,
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  speak of ailments of the chest and stomach, and of poor sleep.
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  So think about what the morning meant.
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  Not a morning of leisure.
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  Long tells us that Marcus became emperor in A.D.
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  161, shared the throne for a time with Lucius Verus, and then ruled alone after
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  Verus died in 169.
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  There was a war in the East.
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  Then a pestilence that, in Long's words, carried off great numbers in Rome and
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  Italy.
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  And then the northern frontier, where, Long writes, the emperor resided for three
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  years on the Danube at Carnuntum.
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  Petitions.
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  Military reports.
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  Legal cases.
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  And later, a general in Asia named Avidius Cassius declared himself Augustus,
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  which meant that someone Marcus had trusted had turned on him.
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  I'm not claiming to know which morning he wrote our passage on.
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  Nobody does.
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  Long tells us these notes were for his own use.
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  They were never meant for us.
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  That's what makes this one so strange to read.
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  Book Five opens, and it doesn't open with a doctrine.
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  It opens with an argument, and he is arguing with himself.
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  Here is the passage, in George Long's translation, from Project Gutenberg number
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  fifteen eight seven seven.
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  "In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be
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  present,-I am rising to the work of a human being.
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  Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for
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  which I was brought into the world?
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  Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself
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  warm?-But this is more pleasant.-Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure,
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  and not at all for action or exertion?
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  Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants,
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  the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the
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  universe?
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  And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste
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  to do that which is according to thy nature?"
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  Listen to the middle of that.
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  "But this is more pleasant."
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  That's the sleepy self talking, and Marcus lets it speak.
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  He doesn't pretend the bed isn't pleasant.
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  He admits it, in writing, to himself.
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  Notice the first thing he does.
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  He doesn't say, rise, because you are emperor.
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  He says, I am rising to the work of a human being.
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  The reason isn't his office.
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  It's his nature.
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  Whatever he is, a person who has things to do for other people,
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  that comes before the title.
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  And then he sends himself outside.
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  Look at the plants, the birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees.
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  Spiders, of all things.
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  Not glamorous workers.
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  Nobody writes songs about the ant.
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  And yet in his picture, they are each quietly putting their small part of the
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  universe in order.
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  I imagine him actually watching one, some small creature already busy on a
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  windowsill while he lies there, and feeling a little caught out.
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  This connects to something we've touched on before.
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  In the morning line we talked about, he reminds himself that people are made for
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  co-operation, like feet, like hands.
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  And elsewhere he loves the picture of the whole world as a single city.
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  The ants and the bees fit that picture.
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  They aren't hustling for themselves.
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  They're parts of something.
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  Now, the passage as Long gives it continues past where I stopped,
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  and the argument gets sharper.
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  The objector says, but it is necessary to take rest also.
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  And Marcus agrees that it is.
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  But he says nature has set limits to rest, as it has to eating and drinking,
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  and yet you go beyond the limits, beyond what is sufficient.
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  In your actions, he says, it is not so, and you stop short of what you can do.
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  That's my summary of the following lines, not a quotation, so don't take the wording
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  as his.
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  Then comes the jab.
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  He points at people who love a craft.
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  The dancer, the money lover, the man who craves glory, he says,
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  will give up food and sleep to perfect the thing they love.
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  And Marcus asks, in effect, whether the common good seems less worth the effort to
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  you than that.
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  Again, that's my paraphrase of the sense.
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  But you can feel the sting.
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  He's shaming himself with the example of people he doesn't even admire.
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  So what do the passage and the life say when you put them side by side?
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  First, this is my own reading, not a rule from the text.
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  The line isn't written by someone who finds duty easy.
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  A man who leaps from bed doesn't need to write this down.
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  The very existence of the paragraph suggests a man who needed it,
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  and needed it often.
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  That's the honest, admiring part.
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  He didn't pretend.
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  He had a body that complained, a mind that wanted warmth, and a job that did not
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  care.
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  And he answered the complaint not by silencing it, but by answering it,
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  like a patient friend.
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  Warmly, but firmly.
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  Not cruelly.
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  Notice there is no insult in the passage.
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  There's a question.
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  Have I been made for this?
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  And I think there's something gentle in the ending too.
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  He says, make haste to do that which is according to thy nature.
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  Not, punish yourself.
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  Make haste.
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  As if the work were already waiting, and all that remained was to join it,
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  the way the bee joins the hive.
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  Somewhere on the Danube, or in a palace in Rome, a tired man threw back
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  the heavy blankets.
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  I imagine the cold hit him at once.
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  And then, I imagine, he got up, and the day began, with its petitions
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  and its reports and its quiet ants somewhere outside, already at work.
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  Good morning.