Marcus Aurelius and The Art of Choosing Your Perspective
The Stoics believe that everything in life depends on the perspective you take on it. As Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius put it, ‘life itself is but what you deem it’.
Part of their philosophical therapy involves learning to choose a wise or skillful perspective on events that are causing you emotional disturbance. Think of it like being a good film director, choosing the right angle and the right lens to frame the action.
Here are five perspective-techniques the Stoics used, all illustrated with examples from Marcus Aurelius’ personal notebook, Meditations:
Cosmic Cam — zooming out to a cosmic or universal perspective
Astro-therapy
A favourite technique of the Stoics — also popular with Platonists and Epicureans — is to zoom out from your personal situation and see the Big Picture.
Marcus often tells himself to look up and contemplate the night sky and the stars, as a way of getting a perspective on his troubles. It’s sort of astro-therapy:
Survey the circling stars, as though yourself were in mid-course with them. Often picture the changing and re-changing dance of the elements. Visions of this kind purge away the dross of our earth-bound life.
Or again:
Many of the anxieties that harass you are superfluous: being but creatures of your own fancy, you can rid yourself of them and expand into an ampler region, letting your thought sweep over the entire universe, contemplating the illimitable tracts of eternity.
Think of it as a ‘cognitive distancing’ technique: rather than zooming in and making a ‘mountain out of a molehill’, you zoom out, and make a molehill of every little mountain in your life.
The same technique appears in other ancient philosophers’ works. Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, for example, imagines a near-death experience of Scipio, a Roman general. Cicero describes Scipio’s soul leaving his body and ascending, seeing the battlefield, then his country, then the continent, the Earth and finally the whole of space, and feeling freed from all his earthly cares.
We can practice this visualization exercise as well — it’s been called the ‘View From Above’. We can contemplate the night sky, or images of the cosmos, or imagine our soul rising through space. Even reading science fiction can give us a sort of ‘cognitive distancing’ from our present concerns — I found reading Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker emotionally relaxing for this reason.
Marcus also contemplates the universe to remind himself how everything is connected, and to shift from an egocentric to an ecocentric view, in which his life is but one strand in the Greater Whole. As a Stoic, he believed the universe was guided by providence, by the divine wisdom of the Logos, so we should accept everything that happens to us.
But even if we don’t believe in the Logos, we can contemplate the interconnectedness of all things as a way to shift beyond attachments and aversions. From a cosmic perspective, everything is connected. Beyond polarities like Good / Bad, Life / Death, Ugly / Beautiful, it’s all One.
Marcus tells himself:
Asia and Europe: tiny corners of the Cosmos. Every sea: a mere drop. Mount Athos: a lump of dirt. The present moment is the smallest point in all eternity. All is microscopic, changeable, disappearing. All things come from that faraway place, either originating directly from that governing part which is common to all, or else following from it as consequences. So even the gaping jaws of the lion, deadly poison, and all harmful things like thorns or an oozing bog are products of that awesome and noble source. Do not imagine these things to be alien to that which you revere, but turn your Reason to the source of all things.
Or again:
Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass.
Or again:
Frequently consider the connection of all things in the Universe. … Reflect upon the multitude of bodily and mental events taking place in the same brief time, simultaneously in every one of us and so you will not be surprised that many more events, or rather all things that come to pass, exist simultaneously in the one and entire unity, which we call the Universe. … We should not say ‘I am an Athenian’ or ‘I am a Roman’ but ‘I am a Citizen of the Universe’.
You notice how he reminds himself of this cosmic perspective, over and over? You need to repeat a perspective, to ingrain it and make it habitual.
2) Micro-Cam — zooming in to overcome attachments to externals
An alternative perspective to zooming out is to zoom in, really close, in order to critically examine something you might be overly attached to.
For example, you might be overly attached to other people’s approval (I know I am). Marcus tells himself:
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.
He suggests:
When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.
You can do this with anything you’re overly attached to. Are you obsessed over the body — yours or someone else’s? Zoom in, consider all its imperfections, its transience, its decomposition (Buddhists used to meditate on decomposing corpses, like this). Marcus constantly reminds himself that his body is just a bag of skin and bones, so don’t get hung up on it. This might seem gross to you. That’s OK. These are just suggestions for perspectives, you don’t have to use one if you don’t like it.
3) Time lapse — stretching time to see things from a long-term perspective
Marcus likes to see events against a backdrop of what we might call Deep Time or Big History. Again, it’s a distancing technique to let go and accept the present:
Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.
And again:
Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.
That’s pretty interesting, from an emperor — to remind yourself that empires rise and fall. It didn’t mean Marcus stopped fighting to preserve and protect the Roman Empire. But he never fell for the idea it was eternal.
This map from the 1930s is a good illustration of the ‘river of time’ as applied to empires:
Marcus uses this ‘river of time’ technique to overcome any anxieties he has about his reputation (in fact, he has a pretty good historical reputation). He says to himself:
is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space — and most of it uninhabited.
He uses the ‘river of time’ perspective to remind himself how many have lived and died before him, all those billions of lives, so intense, so full of highs and lows. They came and went in a flash, like the lives of moths:
Don’t let yourself forget how many doctors have died, furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others’ ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves. How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal. How many whole cities have met their end: Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. And all the ones you know yourself, one after another. One who laid out another for burial, and was buried himself, and then the man who buried him — all in the same short space of time. In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.
Again, this perspective may be sound a bit harsh to you. You may say, OK, human life is brief. But that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. It’s poignant that our brief lives are so full of emotion and drama and yet so brief.
I agree with this. Still, that Deep Time perspective can be useful if you’re really struggling with anxiety over your failings. It doesn’t matter that much, you’re just a blink in eternity. Relax, take it easy, enjoy the show, you’re a miniscule and temporary part of it.
4) Slow mo — focus on the present moment
This is an alternative technique, which is also very useful in different situations. Rather than ruminating on the past or possible future, you wake yourself up from this compulsive rumination or day-dreaming, and bring your focus sharply to the present moment, stretching out the Eternal Now like a slow mo shot.
Marcus tells himself:
Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
Again, he warns himself to keep control of the ego’s tendency to fantasize about the future:
Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer.
Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present — and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that…well, then, heap shame upon it.
This may sound contradictory to the last technique. But the point is to find the right perspective for the right moment. Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine Deep Time, sometimes you need to focus on the here and now.
5) Pan-cam — remind yourself that everyone goes through tough times
Pan-cam is basically a technique to pan round and see how, in the words of REM, ‘everyone hurts’ — in the video for that song, inspired by Fellini’s 8 ½, the camera pans along a traffic jam and we get to see in to people’s inner thoughts and sufferings.
Marcus also reminds himself, when life is tough and he may feel self-pity or bewilderment, that this is the way the world is. Don’t be surprised if it hurts sometimes. Everybody hurts, not just you. That can help you let go of your attachment to your unique drama, and realize it’s not your suffering, it’s just suffering, the human condition.
He tells himself:
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.
Or again:
How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life
Or again:
Though you break your heart, men will go on as before.
There are other techniques like this, to lessen our attachment to our particular suffering, and open our hearts to others going through hard times. There’s a Buddhist meditation technique called Tonglen, for example. When you suffer a particular hardship — losing your job, say — rather than getting wrapped up in egotistical self-pity, you can open your heart to all others who have gone through this pain, and wish both yourself and all of them compassion and liberation.
So there you go, five techniques, five lenses or camera angles. There are of course many more, we haven’t even got into God-Cam (visualizing an all-loving deity) or other such angles.
We are the director of our lives — we get to choose the angle and the lens through which we frame events.
As a final bonus lens…I woke up this morning at 3am, filled with object-less anxiety. My problem-solving mind started racing around, and I found myself thinking what my goals were at the moment. Did I even have an over-arching life goal? I didn’t seem any closer to starting a family. I wasn’t part of a spiritual community, nor did I even follow much of a daily practice. I am working on a book, but that’s not much of a life goal, just putting out book after book. What was I living for? I felt a gnawing sense of emptiness and dread.
Suddenly, into my head popped the thought: practice with what is happening now. Welcome the anxiety. Breathe into it. Ride it.
I realized the dharma — the path, the practice — is always there with me. It’s not a God, nor a guru. It’s a wisdom which is greater than any being. It’s the nature of consciousness. And it never goes away. We can reconnect with it any moment. It’s not something we have to achieve. As the poet Hakuin says: ‘This very land is the Lotus land. This very body is the Buddha’. It doesn’t have to involve grand plans for the future. It can be as easy as breathing, noticing, and accepting whatever is arising.
So that helped me this morning. Dharma Cam: whatever is arising is the practice.
If you want to discover more about how people follow Stoicism today, check out my award-winning book, Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations.