“If
you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and
past – can make yourself, as Empedocles says, ‘a sphere rejoicing in its
perfect stillness,’ and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means
the present)… then you can spend the time you have left in tranquility. And in
kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.”
-
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book XII:III
To my thinking, nostalgia is as much of a vice as
anxiety. Even the most beautiful of memories can cause a disproportionate amount
of pain in the one who remembers. And to one who is particularly afflicted,
mundane or even unpleasant memories become objects of nostalgia. While the recollection
of what we perceive as better times can be a source of joy, I think that it is
more often than not a source pain.
How often do we let the beautiful experiences of our
lives become soiled by the realization that soon they will be reduced to
memory? What a waste that is!
The same can be said of the anxiety and anguish that
thoughts of the future produce, although to my mind this is a more obvious
affliction. But in a more subtle way, remaining fixed upon the future will
deprive us of happiness due to the simple fact that the future is not ours. If
I place happiness in a future event, then I will inevitably never attain it. “The
life of a foolish man is fearful and unpleasant; it is swept totally away into
the future” (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius).
The common issue here is that both vices turn us away
from the grace that is the present instant. The present moment is rich with
meaning, it opens to us eternity, and it is our only real contact with the
world. It is for these reasons that the Epicureans and Stoics focused so intensely
on it at the exclusion of the past and the future. The stoics practiced this to
such an extent that they treated every moment as if it were their last, their
attention was acute and intensified with the urgency of death. This same
urgency is found in the Christian ascetical tradition (which has many parallels
to Stoicism), as Athanasius relates to us that Antony lived in the desert each
day as if it were his last, with death continually before his eyes. And in the
Gospels themselves the Lord admonishes us to not spend time in anxiety
concerning the future.
In the end it comes down to the desire to truly live,
to actualize my potential as a human being. To know myself and the world I must
concentrate on the present to the exclusion of all else. For the mind turns the
past into an illusion, and the future is nothing but a distant myth; living in
either of these fantasies brings nothing but pain and discontentment.
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