Great is the peace that comes when we accept what is out of our control: the circumstantial facts of our lives and the world into which we were born. There may be many aspects of today’s world that you do not love, but rest easy in the knowledge that you did not choose them either.
In reflective moments, I find great peace in the fact that while the greater patterns of the day are set (oh Western 21st-century world!), the patterns of our individual lives are still mostly under our control. Yes! A man or woman of great energy can still enact tremendous change in their own lives, the lives around them, and in rare, exceptional examples even society at large!
And yet, there is peace too in the old saying that all things must pass. Societies rise and fall in regular rhythms, and the more history I read, the more assured I am of this. Certainly, I do not preach blind optimism and admit that an energetic and determined person born in 400 AD probably could not have done much to prevent the seemingly inevitable fall of Rome, but this hypothetical person could absolutely have lived their life in a way that represented a complete antithesis to the crumbling, degenerating world around them.
If nothing else, friends, this is a worthy goal!
No matter how much I or anyone else preaches it, humanity finds it exceedingly hard to accept what is out of its control. In some respects, we have good reason to be suspicious of such advice: humanity has an (some might say) impressive track record of eventually controlling what was once thought uncontrollable! For many, a hike in the woods is peaceful because it represents no danger. So many great wildernesses that once were like wolves we’ve turned into friendly dogs, and now nature is man’s newest best friend. Oh, but what antagonists we once were! But now, I think it’s fair to say, modern societies attempt to keep nature on something of a leash if they can.
With nature nearly conquered, 21st-century humans have turned their attention to conquering human nature. If you doubt this, I suggest reading into today’s news rather than just simply reading it. Nevertheless, our individual age and the current year will always define us. We cannot choose when and where we are born, and today cannot be any other day. We must accept the circumstances that confine us, but we can still thrive relative to them.
For example, just as the laws of gravity limit how high we can jump, the events, norms, and political movements of our time restrict us. With great effort, we can train ourselves to jump as high as possible within these limits, but we are always subject to them. Julius Caesar was just a human being, like you or me, but it is possible that he was able to ascend higher in his time than we can in ours due to different societal gravitational laws. Still, it may be possible for us to attain his level in a sense relative to the opportunities of our day, even if we never found a great empire.
Yes, one doesn’t have to be a true-believing relativist to admit that there are many scenarios where there is much wisdom in a relativistic worldview. We live in an age where dogma can be disseminated at an unprecedented rate. The efficiency of our dogmatic machine has become quite the marvel! Social media and the universality of the smartphone are the cherry on top, the last screw to be tightened! Still, take heart. What opens up the gates of dogma opens up the gates of knowledge too! And how often they share a gate! As we consume the news and (what’s really intended) the narratives suggested by it, ask yourself what tastes like candy and what tastes like broccoli. Friends, I suggest you eat healthy!
If you are able to retain the capacity to think critically, to maintain stern rationality in a passionately irrational age, you, my friend, have begun to ascend as high in your day as Julius Caesar did in his. You are an emperor in spirit….even if not in title. How rare are the eras, exceedingly rare, when spirit (the heart of the matter) and title match. Rare are the eras where the great, transcendent artists of that day are actually recognized by their contemporaries, and the same goes for the great thinkers, the great inventors, etc., etc. And as much as Caesar may have been celebrated in his day, he was still murdered and labeled a tyrant before he ascended to immortality as the founder of a great empire! Yes, friends, do not despair over what you cannot change!
If you are like me, you may sometimes look over the landscape of the 21st century Western world and curse being born in a declining age, an age of mass media and mass (which is to say superficial) pleasures. Something handmade and methodically stitched is unwinding into excess. Yes, it may be true, but we cannot leave here either! Still, it is possible to be grateful for the comforts that tempt society at large to a general decline.
Not only is it possible to be grateful, but it may very well be our first step towards greatness! Only what is difficult is truly praiseworthy, and how much easier it is to criticize and curse our lot than it is to be grateful. We who may be witnessing the passing of a golden age, who still feast on the ripe, great fruits harvested by our forefathers before they are completely spent.
In a very real sense, we may be the last of the lucky! And while it is natural that the thoughtful among us may have an acute sense of foreboding about the path of our society, be assured, it comes with the territory, friends, we who are born creators will always wish to create golden ages rather than to use them up. But it is out of our control, the extant empire of our time may be ending, but we can still create personal and communal golden ages. And we can be grateful for the work of those that came before us, the great work that has been all but forgotten except by the few of us sensitive enough to remember! Jealous enough to remember too, yes! But despair not! Time cannot be conquered, but we hold sway over our own years.
Why swim against the current, wouldn't it be easier to ride it out even with our hunch of a great waterfall being just up ahead? Do we listen to the cynics who ask why expend the energy to swim against the waterfall when we are likely to succumb to it anyway? Maybe there’s a certain logic to such cynicism, but we are not made like that friends!
We can accept that we were born into the age we were born into while still resisting it! Yes, the fact of the waterfall may claim us in the end, the flowing zeitgeist of the age may be too strong, but we won’t know if we have the strength to resist it until we try.
With a few of the strongest and most energetic swimmers working in unison, maybe we could even reverse the flow away from the waterfall and towards the heights once again? I don’t say it’s probable or even possible, but it is certainly preferable to think it is possible, it is certainly preferable to work to regain the heights, to not give up to the decline, to imagine that we can still become like Caesar even if nobody would ever think to call us that!
May the great, undying secret drives of our spiritual lives define us more than anything else if only because we define ourselves!