Book 4, Letter 15, to Marcus Aurelius, On Epicurean Living

Hail! Emperor Marcus Aurelius,

I am writing to apologise. I am a big fan of your writing, and of Seneca and Epictetus, yet despite two years of studying Stoic philosophy, I am living an Epicurean life. I've not actually ever read any Epicurus, but I find that my life is nonetheless defined by its pleasures.

And it is good.

My work is a pleasure, I am a gardener and an aged care support worker. Gardening is self explanatory, suffice it to say that my job is to make the world more beautiful, and to help others. It is a great pleasure to go to work every day that I do.

My study is a pleasure. I am not a student at university, and thus, my study is a pleasure. I read who I want to read, and write what I want to write, and all my deadlines are self imposed. The same goes for my study of music, and of art. I play and write music that I want to hear, I draw and paint pictures that I want to see, and I write stories that I want to read. I share them with many friends and family, and it is a pleasure to do so. And it is good.

My family is a pleasure. We have our health. We have a good home, we have all the food we could ever need, we have all of modern life's necessities and many of its conveniences. Family life is a pleasure. And it is good.

Is this pleasure the Highest Good? I cannot say.

But it is good.

In my aged care work, I find every day a way to put into practice stoic precepts and the advice which Cicero gives in his book On Old Age. At 40, I am about half the age of my clients. Every day I see my future reflected back to me through their stories. Every day I see them as young ladies and gentlemen, full of life and vigour. I joke with them, I listen to them and I am given greater context for my own joys and losses as I hear tales from the war, or from the depression, or from living in China, or from having children die.

As I get to know them better, I am privy to their worries and anxieties, I learn the meaning behind their scars, or their limp, or swollen arm. And I am known by them, I share as well, and I befriend these people who are deep into their own twilight years, and in some cases nearing their imminent deaths, not with a disinterested, or dismissive nonchalance, but with a Stoic practicality. It is real to them, just as their whole lives have been real.

Every day I remember that I am mortal.

Every day I am reminded to concern myself with what I can influence, and to not concern myself with what is beyond my power.

Every day I remember that to be prepared to die, is to be ready to live.

I am reminded that Kindness is a gift and a virtue. I am taught by the kindness of the people I serve. I discover kindness in myself, rising from the darkness and it lights up my heart, and it lights up the faces of the people I serve.

I remember that virtue is the highest good.

I remember that kindness is a pleasure.

So I ask you, Emperor Aurelius, is Kindness the Highest Good?

Meditations: Book 3, section 10 (Gregory Hays translation, 2002)

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small – small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

Or, since the older translation is so beautiful: (George Long, 1862)

Throwing away then all things, hold to these only which are few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only this present time, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or it is uncertain. Short then is the time which every man lives, and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short too the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago.

These little acts of kindness that my life allows me to share, suddenly seem quite important indeed.

Thank you Marcus, for all that you give.

With gratitude and respect.

Morgan.