Making the Best of it in Times of Crises

May 26, 2020

As this challenging time continues, the Meaningful Life Center will continue with our on-line offerings through the early part of the summer. Hopefully you will find one or more of them worthwhile.
Meaningful Life Center

Since we are living more of our lives online, here is a short fun video in which a young woman talks to her past self from 3 months ago. It makes vivid the changes in our world in a very short time.
Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self

If you like music, here is a YouTube music clip made during an earlier crisis, but the message is very relevant to our time as well. Your test this morning: can you name all the singers?
USA for Africa Concert

One thing I have been doing during this time is to read about past crises in many different periods in the U.S. and around the world. Doing this has been bracing, sometimes sad, and quite often inspiring. We humans have faced so many difficult times, and each time we have overcome the difficulties, sometimes with courage and grace. There are so many inspiring stories – famous people like Florence Nightingale, Winston Churchill, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela. But there are millions of those less well known who have acted with courage and determination in the face of great challenges.

Continuing the theme of inner peace from the last email, one person worth focusing on who found peace while dealing with extremely challenging circumstances was Marcus Aurelius. He left a journal of his private thoughts that has been of great help to many for almost two thousand years.

Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) was a Roman Emperor, but also a Stoic philosopher. During his nineteen years as Emperor he was constantly fighting wars on the border of the empire (wars he didn’t start, but engaged in to prevent the overthrow of the empire). He spent much time at the battlefront, taking great personal risk, enduing hunger, sleeping in tents in very difficult conditions, and undertaking repeated and arduous travel all over the empire. He struggled with health problems, self-doubt, anxiety, and sometimes depression. He thought a lot about death and disloyalty. During his reign there was a horrific plague (the worst in Roman history), his wife probably committed infidelity, and one of his closest allies tried to overthrow him. He dealt with multiple invasions, attempted rebellion against his authority, and even a dangerous mob of citizens. The wars and plaque depleted the treasury to the extent that finanacial collapse was a possibility. The list of his troubles could go on and on.

But in the midst of it all, he was known for his personal calm, peacefulness, and equanimity. He saw each obstacle as an opportunity to practice a virtue, and at different times would set his intention very consciously on practicing a particular virtue such as patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice, or creativity. The power he held never seemed to go to his head. Neither did the stress of the many burdens he endured. He rarely expressed anger and never seemed to harbor hatred or bitterness.

Here are some of the quotes from his journal:

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

“Death smiles at us all – all a man can do is smile back.”

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.”

“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”

“Our actions may be impeded … but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle.”

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

I wish I could live more of the time from the perspective he was developing.

May you be well,
May you have much peace today,

David