Our Occupation

And Marcus Aurelius' guide on dealing with others

Intro to Month’s Theme

So much of our society today has been divided into groups in order to separate us from one another. For those paying attention, they can see how the news, how social media, how people we follow, all focus on ways to create an us-vs-them mentality, driving the wedge further and further.

But if we take a step back and re-evaluate life, we can see that political differences aside, we’re more like each other than we often see.

We each leave in our communities. We are social creatures. We need connection with others and the drastic assault on that is creating a world of constant hostility and tension.

Yet for centuries, philosophers have been speaking about the need to work with one another, to see the differences and look past them for the betterment of society.

Marcus Aurelius, dealing with people every day reminded himself that we’re like rows of teeth, meant to work in conjunction with each other.

The poet John Donne once reminded his readers that no man was an island out there in the sea alone. Rather, we’re a unit needing to work with each other:

No man is an island,
entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.

For the month of September we’re exploring relationships and what it means to work with one another, to live in a community with one another, and to be a good citizen.

And we start with Marcus Aurelius’ exploration of how to work with others.

For the better, we live in a world populated by others, and in today’s age, we have the ability to connect with a huge portion that before now was non-existent. Never before have we been able to pick up a cell phone or open a laptop and see or speak to a loved one or friend from across the world.

For thousands of years we have banded together in groups for survival. And yet today we never think twice about discarding people from our lives, or ‘owning’ them online. The online world has not become a town square as is often portrayed but rather is a gladiatorial ring of who can ‘destroy’ who the best.

And this is cutting us off from one another. Marcus Aurelius spoke of this issue thousands of years ago with the metaphor of tree branches.

“A branch cut away from the branch beside it is simultaneously cut away from the whole tree. So too a human being separated from another is cut loose from the whole community. The branch is cut off by someone else.”

When we do this, according to Marcus, we continuously push each other further and further apart. This makes it harder over time to bring us back together.

“You can see the difference between the branch that's been there since the beginning, remaining on the tree and growing with it, and the one that's been cut off and grafted back.”

Throughout the Meditations, Marcus reminds himself time and time again that our number one purpose in life is people—they are our “occupation” and we are made to “work with others.”

Here’s three ways he suggests we do just that.

Practice Listening

“Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.”

So much of our attentionspans have been cut short nowadays whether it be from social media, notifications, or workload.

But in order to better connect with each other, we first need to try and understand each other and that starts with listening to another person.

This means resisting judgment, resisting a need to respond, and instead, try and understand the person and their viewpoint.

It’s okay to disagree, the point is to listen and better understand where they’re coming from.

Instruct or Endure

”People exist for one another. You can instruct or endure them.”

Remembering that we are here to work with one another is a great reminder that we cannot abandon our task. If human beings are our occupation, then our task is learning to work with one another.

This means learning when we should instruct them and their actions and when we should be quiet and endure them.

This is a balancing act as we don’t want to be silent when we need to instruct and we don’t want to interject when we should endure.

We learn when, and how, to respond through continuous attempts to change our mindset and release the idea of abandonment from our actions. By doing so, we instead shift our focus to understand we’re in it for the long-hail.

Participate

“You participate in a society by your existence. Then participate in its life through your actions - all your actions. Any action not directed toward a social end (directly or indirectly) is a disturbance to your life, an obstacle to wholeness, a source of dissension.”

It’s so easy to become cynical about politics, or people. It’s easy to throw the middle finger to those who think differently than us.

But at the end of the day we’re not different. We have different ideas, different opinions, and different ways to accomplish things but it doesn’t mean we should reject each other. It doesn’t mean we should give up and not participate. On the contrary, it’s in times like this that we do the opposite, we lean into each other, we attempt to better understand each other.

This doesn’t mean having to agree, but at least trying to understand where the other side comes from.

Our goal is to participate in building the communities we live in and that often means working with people we do not agree with.

While Marcus’ advice to himself were reminders of what needed to be done, he was writing them so that he could then take action. That is the purpose of his journal, reflect and then act, have a clear direction, understand what you’re up against, both internally and externally.

The next step, then, is putting his words into practice.

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

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