Life Is Changing
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 book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Towards the end of Book 11, he discusses an interesting aspect of the changes:
Unripe, ripe, raisin grapes: everything changes not into nothingness, but into something that does not yet exist.
Here’s another version:
Unripe grapes, a ripe bunch, dried grapes – all these changes are not in nothing, but in something that does not yet exist.
What does it mean
In his own way, Aurelius explains that grapes are not an object, but an event. It is immature at first, then it ripens and then it becomes a raisin. Even then, it breaks down into molecules that become something else. It never becomes non-existent, it just is always in a state of “not yet existing”. What we perceive as grapes is actually changing.
The same can be said for you. Your life is an event that is constantly changing. Where you were once a child, you will now gradually mature and one day you will be old and wrinkled. Think of yourself as constantly in the process of becoming “something that doesn’t yet exist.”
What to take from there
Change is not just an important aspect of life – it is life itself. Your mind and body are changing every second of every day. At the moment of conception, you change and become an infant; at the moment of birth, you change and become a baby; then a teenager; etc. You are always on your way to a different version of yourself.
But what will it be? During this constant transformation, you are presented with countless options. Every move you make, every action you allow, every decision you make during these transformations is yours. These options can be simple:
- Do I eat pizza or salad?
- Do I play sports or sit on the couch?
- Am I wearing this shirt or that one?
- Will I get up now or in 15 minutes?
Or, these options can be more complex:
- Will I take risks in my career?
- Will I move to a new city?
- Should I tell them I love them?
You see, although you cannot stop change, you can shape it. You are constantly changing – as you travel, you have no choice but to set off – just like everyone and everything around you. How will you navigate in all this? Change is a gift, change is freedom.