Nothing New Under the Sun
Think by way of example on the times of Vespasian, and you'll see all these things: marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, wars, holiday feasts, commerce, farming, flattering, pretending, suspecting, scheming, praying that others die, grumbling over one's lot, falling in love, amassing fortunes, lusting after office and power. Now that life of theirs is dead and gone...you're better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.
–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.32 (trans. Gregory Hays)
Nineteen centuries removed and still relevant. It never ceases to amaze me that the personal diaries of a Roman Emperor not only survived, but continue to be a source of wisdom and guidance for the modern world.
I just finished Sarafina by Philip Fracassi and decided it was time for a genre break. All horror and no substance makes Karl a bored reader. I’ve been feeling very anti-Amazon lately, so I dragged the family to a local bookstore, determined to find some non-fiction palate cleansers.
This is Texas, so I almost missed the single shelf labeled “Philosophy and Eastern Religions”, sandwiched between the dozen shelves of Bibles and Cookbooks. I haven’t read Meditations since undergrad, so when I saw the Gregory Hays translation with its cool black and red cover, I decided it was time for another go.
Ryan Holiday wrote the foreword. He lives in Austin and owns a bookshop just up the road in Bastrop. I’ll need to check that out soon.
I also picked up a copy of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I don’t know what got me thinking about it, but I’ve been wanting to learn more about America’s treatment of Native Americans. I’ve always had a fascination with indigenous cultures and, to no one’s surprise, our public education curriculum doesn’t like to say much about them.
“There were some skirmishes, but ultimately they saw the light of Manifest Destiny and moved out of our way.” That’s the gist of what we were taught. It’s about time I dug into the history myself.
But I digress. The quote at the start was my motivation to write today. We are all prone to presentism, an inability to look beyond the immediate present. We hear it all the time, “Kids don’t want to work these days,” or, “We’ve never been so divided.” Our limited perspective leads us to think our problems are novel. That attitude further restricts where we look for answers.
In truth, there really is nothing new under the sun. The same problems have always existed. People have always just been people. Even Roman Emperors had trouble getting out of bed and dealing with others.
This should be a comfort. All this has been done before. Why are you stressing about it?
