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Ep. 28: Live with the Gods (Season Finale) · The Morning Stoic: The Untold Lives Behind Stoicism

• 0:00
  Before the camp wakes, there is a lamp, and a man bent over a small writing tablet.
• 0:08
  I imagine it that way, anyway.
• 0:11
  A tent on the northern frontier, somewhere along the Danube,
• 0:16
  in the years we usually place in the 170s.
• 0:19
  Cold coming up through the ground.
• 0:22
  A cough, maybe, a stomach that won't settle.
• 0:28
  Messengers waiting outside with dispatches about a war that does not end.
• 0:33
  The man is Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome.
• 0:39
  And what he writes, in Greek, is not a speech, and not a decree.
• 0:43
  It's a note to himself.
• 0:46
  The book has come down to us as the Meditations, though the old title is usually
• 0:51
  given as something like, To Himself.
• 0:54
  Nobody was supposed to read it.
• 0:56
  Which is, I think, why it still sounds so honest.
• 1:00
  This is the last morning of our first season, and I find I want to go slowly.
• 1:08
  We began in Athens, with a young merchant named Zeno sitting at a bookstall,
• 1:14
  hearing about Socrates, and being told to follow a man.
• 1:19
  We watched Crates break a jar of lentil porridge.
• 1:22
  We stood in the painted colonnade where a school got its name.
• 1:26
  We met Cleanthes, who drew water in the gardens at night so he could think by day,
• 1:33
  and who answered to the name of ass.
• 1:36
  We met Chrysippus, with his books beyond counting.
• 1:41
  Then Rome: Seneca, writing to Lucilius about time, about crowds,
• 1:48
  about what we owe the people who serve us.
• 1:51
  And Epictetus, lame, once enslaved, teaching that the will cannot be fettered.
• 1:58
  And now the emperor, at the far end of that long line.
• 2:04
  A man with every kind of power, who spends his private hours reminding himself what
• 2:10
  is actually his.
• 2:11
  In Book Five, Marcus is not in a grand mood.
• 2:16
  He's writing about getting out of bed.
• 2:19
  About being tired.
• 2:21
  About the work of a human being, and about the friction of other people,
• 2:26
  and the body's small complaints.
• 2:30
  It's the book of a man who has to keep reminding himself, because the reminding
• 2:35
  doesn't stay done.
• 2:37
  Then, in section twenty seven, he writes this.
• 2:41
  I'm reading from George Long's translation, the one in the public domain.
• 2:46
  Quote.
• 2:47
  Live with the gods.
• 2:50
  And he does live with the gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul
• 2:57
  is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all that the
• 3:03
  daemon wishes, which Zeus hath given to every man for his guardian and guide,
• 3:11
  a portion of himself.
• 3:13
  And this is every man's understanding and reason.
• 3:21
  Now, it would be easy to hear that and picture temples, smoke,
• 3:27
  an emperor on his knees.
• 3:29
  But that's not what he means.
• 3:32
  Marcus isn't describing a ritual, or a vision, or a voice in the dark.
• 3:39
  For the Stoics, the whole cosmos is one connected, reasoning whole,
• 3:45
  and Zeus is one of the names they give to that governing reason.
• 3:49
  And look at how he defines the daemon.
• 3:52
  It's the guardian and guide that Zeus gave to every person,
• 3:57
  a portion of himself.
• 3:59
  Then the last line closes the door on any mystery.
• 4:03
  This, he says, is every man's understanding and reason.
• 4:08
  Not a ghost beside you.
• 4:10
  Your own mind, at its best, is the divine part.
• 4:15
  So living with the gods, here, is a posture.
• 4:20
  It means showing, constantly, that your soul is satisfied with what has been
• 4:25
  assigned to you.
• 4:28
  That's a hard phrase.
• 4:30
  It doesn't mean liking the war, or pretending the cough isn't there.
• 4:35
  I read it, and this is my own interpretation, as refusing to spend your days in
• 4:41
  resentment, or despair, or self pity, while the reasoning part of you keeps doing
• 4:48
  its work.
• 4:49
  Let me be honest about the hard edge of it.
• 4:53
  Marcus did not choose his lot the way we choose a coat.
• 4:58
  He inherited an empire, plague, and frontier wars, and he governed through all of
• 5:05
  it.
• 5:06
  Whether his calm was always real, we can't know.
• 5:10
  The notebook suggests he had to talk himself into it, again and again.
• 5:16
  Which is oddly comforting.
• 5:18
  And notice the thread that runs back through this whole season.
• 5:23
  Zeno following a stranger.
• 5:26
  Cleanthes bearing his burdens.
• 5:28
  Epictetus saying that his leg may be bound, but not his will.
• 5:34
  Each of them found the same small room, the one that no officer,
• 5:39
  no master, no tyrant could enter.
• 5:43
  Marcus, with all of Rome behind him, ends up writing to that same room.
• 5:49
  I imagine the tablet set down, and the flap of the tent lifting,
• 5:55
  and gray light coming in over the river.
• 5:59
  The day will bring what it brings.
• 6:03
  But for a moment, in the quiet, a man has reminded himself who is keeping him
• 6:09
  company.
• 6:11
  That's our season, then.
• 6:13
  Thank you for rising with me, morning after morning, to sit with these lives.
• 6:21
  The ground ahead gets harder, and we'll walk it when we're ready.
• 6:26
  For now, the light is up.
• 6:31
  Go gently into your day.