Affection Is the Enemy
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations , Lifehacker’s weekly dip in the pool of stoic wisdom and a guide to using its waters to meditate and improve your life.
This week’s selection is from The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. He offers some simple tips for avoiding attachment to material things, titles, and praise:
“Accept humbly, let go easily.”
Another version:
“Accept without arrogance, let go with indifference.”
And another:
“Accept without pride, let go without attachment.”
What does it mean
This tutorial is pretty simple but deep. When something comes your way – be it status, praise, or material things – accept it with humility and remember that just because you received it, you are more important than anyone else. Then don’t get attached to what you have acquired. That way, when you inevitably lose it, you can safely carry on.
What to take from there
Aurelius believed that true happiness can only come from an inner source: your mind or soul. For Stoics, spending their lives chasing worldly things such as material possessions, wealth, social status, meaningless titles, and praise from others is a path to unhappiness and disappointment. After all, the more you want, the poorer you will feel . If these things come your way, it’s okay to accept them, but only with calculated uncertainty. Because nothing lasts forever, and one day it will disappear.
Avoid attachment to such worldly things as best you can. It is the enemy of contentment – the one that you have manifested within yourself. This attachment, this desperate need for recognition and abundance, is the cause of suffering for many people. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you, friend! When it’s time to let go of something, do it indifferently. It was never yours. It belongs to nature, the universe, and your time is over with that. While indifference may seem apathetic, it gives you the opportunity to let go of attachment and its associated difficulties once and for all. You must be more than your belongings, your status, your money. Be grateful when things are going their way, but be humble when things change. Otherwise, you will only make yourself unhappy.
You can read the entire book of Meditations for free here .