Thursday, 28 November 2019

Book 3, letter 14, part 1 of 2 To Marcus Aurelius; on the eclipse of the sun






Dear Marcus,

The stress is unbearable sometimes. My arms feel like blocks of stone, I cannot lift my boulder hands from the bed, my legs, my head, all of me feels like crumbling granite. I struggle to breathe, like some leaden creature sits atop my chest choking me.

There is nothing worse than uncertainty.

Doom, I can handle,

but the uncertainty of an eclipse is unbearable.

For weeks the sun has shone upon me with its love, then in the blink of sleep, the light and warmth are replaced with an empty smile, a face always turning away, eyes that do not want to look, a voice that does not want to speak to me.

And every real expression becomes pretended.

What can I do Marcus? The past will never let go. Vulnerant omens, ultima necant. (Every hour wounds, the last one kills). What can I do with my echoing words that, once said, can never be taken back ? Forgiveness? Impossible. Forgetting? Impossible. What remains is the lingering feeling that I cannot tell right from wrong, I feel lost. I question my value as a human being, and find comfort in the fading bruises and persistent pain in my head each morning. Fighting with myself is a loosing battle.

*
From: Meditations
Book 10, Section 3
(Hays Translation)

Every thing that happens is either endurable or not.

If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.

If it’s unendurable . . . then stop complaining.

Your destruction will mean its end as well.

Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can
make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so.

In your interest, or in your nature.

*

My destruction will mean its end as well huh? I really want this to be the advice that I need, but I do not have the luxury of self destruction, Marcus.

I have a life to live and a family to raise. I cannot endure in silence while the sun goes cold. At least I have you to write to, even if sometimes your advice is not so good. My stomach hurts.

*
From: Meditations.
Book 8, Section 47

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now. But if anything in thy disposition gives thee pain, who hinders thee from correcting thy opinion?”

It would be lovely if willpower alone could free a person from the bondage of their own mind, but the mind is not the only thing that remembers. The Body, the damn body stores everything, forgets nothing. Such discordant music the bones of my past mistakes compose, clattering as a broken xylophone in the sack of my living flesh. My disposition would free itself if it knew anything of freedom.

Who is it that hinders me from correcting my opinion?

It is easier for me to believe in demons and curses and the terrors of a personal eclipse, than it is for me to wipe away the judgement of a sun who refuses to shine on me.

So much is out of my hands, Marcus. I feel powerless.

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