It Will Be Taken Away

Chief among qualities of the Stoics was an acceptance of their own transience, often citing impermanence as a precise basis for perspective. A passage of Meditations finds Marcus Aurelius prompting us toward appreciation by asking us to ponder how much we'd miss what we have if it were to be taken from us.

Basic laws of chaos, aging, and mortality assure us that loss of any and every kind is not a possibility, but a definite.

The question we're left with is the following: What does the inevitable removal of that which we claim to cherish mean for how we engage or treat it now? More poignantly, what does the fact that you won't always live where you live, that your health may not come as easily in the future, and that the lives of those around you are changing and evolving at just as rapid of a pace as your own mean for how you operate in the present?

Our challenge is remaining conscientiously aware that something or someone being there does not mean that it or they always will be. This is not a matter of our ability to eventually adapt to any reality, but of our tendency to delay meaningfully engaging a reality until it's threatened. As with anything difficult to anticipate, we train by preparing—by living in such a way that if everything changed, there is little left for us to regret.

The inevitability of the end of anything demands a conscious audit of everything—of what we claim to appreciate and of whether or not we're actually doing so. Appreciation expressed is active, and in its best form, urgent.

In no uncertain terms, it will all be taken away. Amidst entropy, presence and intent are our strengths.

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