“Each and every hour make up your mind…. to accomplish the matter presently at hand with genuine seriousness, loving care, independence and justice. Allow your mind freedom from all other considerations. This you can do if you perform every action in your life as if it were your last, putting aside all your wayward impulses and emotional resistance to the choices of reason, and all pretense, selfishness and discontent with what has been allotted to you. See how few are the things which a person needs to master in order to live a tranquil and godly existence. The gods ask nothing more of us.”
– Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius was Emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 A.D. It is my experience that this quote contains the essence of what is required to live a tranquil and godly existence in 2010.
Every hour or as you begin any new activity, make up your mind to accomplish this matter, the one in front of us at this moment, seriously, with an independent mind and in a just and fair manner, considering nothing else at this moment.
When I was a youngster (high school age) I was in a whirlwind of activity and emotion. I had no experience nor any idea what the phrase tranquil and godly existence meant. Living in our home was somewhat akin to being in a plastic covered paint-ball zone. No actual bullets and some of those paint balls sting. Arguments, upsets and conflict were the norm. We lived in a nice house, but you couldn’t sit on the couch because that created dust which would require cleaning. We had just moved to a new community and I had the opportunity to attend an independent school as a day student. The academic routine was very demanding. My relationship with books up until that moment had been to carry them and glance at them prior to producing a reasonable result on a test. These teachers actually expected you to read and understand the material presented and to be able to answer questions that required extrapolation, the ability to develop a considered opinion based on those facts.
I didn’t know who William F. Buckley, Jr. or William Sloane Coffin were let alone what they stood for. You read either The New York Times or The New York Herald Tribune to see what was going on in the world and you would be expected to know. Bill Buckley and Bill Coffin each showed up on campus for one of the regular Forums on Friday night. They were so bright and so different. They were incredibly articulate and spoke with a passion I had never experienced.
The Vietnam War was beginning to heat up and segregation ruled the land. In my sophomore year, Dad (I capitalize Mom, Dad, Mother and Father because I think they are the most important jobs in the world) lost his job for telling the truth. He was working as Comptroller of a division of ITT. The President of that division was Harold Geneen, who later went on to become Chairman of ITT. Geneen wanted my Dad to “cook the books,” alter the numbers to create a particular impression and my Dad refused. How could my Dad lose his job for telling the truth and not being willing to compromise? Harold Geneen, as Chairman of ITT, later contributed millions of dollars to Richard Nixon for the CIA to overthrow the Alende government in Chile, resulting in Alende’s death. In hindsight, Dad got off easy. It would be years before Dad let in to how powerful that example had been to me. He thought that he had been a failure in his business career.
Ed Pulling the Headmaster at Millbrook gave me a scholarship (which I later found out came from his own pocket) which allowed me to have relative stability during those next three years. In my senior year I was given the opportunity to be an exchange student with an all Negro (the use of the word Black was yet to come,) independent school. Another classmate and I spent six weeks at Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina. Albert Boothby had arranged this opportunity through his extensive work and contacts with Negro colleges and universities in the south.
During the exchange, my roommate was Woody Odum, who was captain of the Palmer basketball team. I loved to travel to away games, all held in segregated Negro high schools in North Carolina. As I sat in the back of the bus as a matter of choice, I recognized the importance of that choice. As I entered the gymnasium in an all Negro public school as the only white spectator other than college recruiters, I felt the power of choice. Somewhere in this process, I recognized what “genuine seriousness” really meant. There were situations in the world I was no longer willing to tolerate and I became serious about finding solutions.
Returning from Palmer, Mr. Boothby and I wrote an application to the Ford Foundation to create a summer program for sixty youngsters. My part in the process was to describe my experience of the capabilities of the Negro students I had met. Once they discovered I had an advanced math background, much of our free time was spent filling in the gaps in their education. There was plenty of spark, hard work and ability. All that was necessary was an inspired, open environment. That summer program became one of the pilots of Upward Bound.
So what does all of this have to do with “old” Marcus Aurelius? Albert and Alice Boothby and Millbrook School began the process of my waking up, which I work at diligently today. If you are loved and allowed to know that there is a condition of “being awake,” we’re half way home. Then what I must do, EVERY DAY, is read Marcus Aurelius or something else that allows me to choose to be awake, grateful for breathing and able to choose.
“Each and every hour make up your mind…. to accomplish the matter presently at hand with genuine seriousness, loving care, independence and justice. Allow your mind freedom from all other considerations.”
If you want to have an impact on your children, your students, your employees be present, be serious (not without humor), loving, kind, free thinking, open minded and just. If we want to have an impact on ending hunger, war, injustice, we must bring the same attitude!
“This you can do if you perform every action in your life as if it were your last, putting aside all your wayward impulses and emotional resistance to the choices of reason, and all pretense, selfishness and discontent with what has been allotted to you.”
In point of fact, this is not only the last but the only moment you have any guarantee of. On three occasions, I have eaten at the Windows on the World restaurant that used to sit on top of the World Trade Center. Not my time.
In 1972, I was hit by a car as a pedestrian. Fell up on the hood instead of under the tires. Not my turn. My brother and I traveled on the Connecticut turnpike a few days before a section we crossed fell out and killed several people. Not our time.
So what is the connection?
Are we meeting those we love as if this were our last opportunity to be together?
Am I giving everything I can in my business, because I know it is about my best being best for me and the company?
Who do I really work for anyway?
How do I behave with people I do not know?
“…putting aside all your wayward impulses and emotional resistance to the choices of reason, and all pretense, selfishness and discontent with what has been allotted to you.”
Do I recognize in this moment that breathing is a miracle?
Do I know that what I have is not as significant as how I am being?
Do I bring a loving heart to all of what I do?
Satisfaction and happiness do not come from things, so I need not envy Tiger Woods’ yacht.
There are probably a thousand quotes worth thinking about on any given day to remind ourselves of the possibility before us. It matters not which ones we use, but that we use something to bring us to the incredible opportunity that exists within this second, this hour, this day.
And beyond that, what matters perhaps next most importantly, is allowing others to know that the same capacity resides within each person, without exception. Marcus Aurelius was asking us to “Wake Up!” each day. It was not long after his request or presentation of opportunity that the great experience in democracy known as Rome came to an end. The unconsciousness I sense at the moment gives me cause to wonder about our resolve to heal the world.
I will be in England for ten days next month with dear friends and clients. I would love for someone else to write the major article for our newsletter. Any takers?
