Aurelius×Moses

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on STUDY HALL, Marcus Aurelius and Moses. They take up On what they would tell their younger self at twenty-five.
2. 00:10
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   At twenty-five I was already past my youth. Hadrian had taken me into his household. I was being prepared for things I did not yet understand. The question is whether advice would have done any good—whether the young man I was could have heard it.
3. 00:26
   Mosesshare moment

   I was in Midian at that age. Herding my father-in-law's flocks. An exile, a fugitive from Pharaoh's house. I think often that those years in the wilderness were not wasted, though they seemed so at the time.
4. 00:44
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   You were forty when the voice came to you from the burning bush, yes? So those fifteen years were preparation, though you did not know it.
5. 00:52
   Mosesshare moment

   I did not know it. I knew only that I had killed a man in anger, defended my kinsmen poorly, and fled. At twenty-five I thought my life had ended. I was tending sheep that were not mine.
6. 01:11
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   Then what would you tell that shepherd? That his exile had purpose?
7. 01:15
   Mosesshare moment

   No. That would be false comfort, and he would not believe it. I would tell him instead to pay attention to the silence. To learn the desert. To watch how the flock moves, how the weak must be carried, how the strong grow careless. All of this he will need.
8. 01:38
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   Practical knowledge. Yes. Though I wonder if the young hear practical advice. At twenty-five I was reading philosophy, trying to understand the Stoics, trying to master myself. I thought understanding was the work.
9. 01:53
   Mosesshare moment

   And it was not?
10. 01:55
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    It was necessary but not sufficient. Understanding without practice is vapor. I wrote later that we should not be satisfied with knowing what we ought to do—we must do it. But at twenty-five I was still collecting principles like gems, admiring them.
11. 02:11
    Mosesshare moment

    What would you have told yourself, then? To act sooner?
12. 02:16
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    To notice what I was already doing. I was faithful to my teachers, I was serious about my studies, I was trying to live simply. These were not nothing. But I thought they were preparation for some future virtue. I would tell myself: you are already living the life. This is it. There is no later moment when everything begins.
13. 02:37
    Mosesshare moment

    Hmm. Yes. Though in my case there was a later moment. The bush that burned but was not consumed. The voice. The commission I tried to refuse four times.
14. 02:54
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    You refused?
15. 02:55
    Mosesshare moment

    I said I was not eloquent. I said I was slow of speech and slow of tongue. I said, send someone else. The Lord became angry with me. In the end He gave me Aaron to speak for me, but the task was mine.
16. 03:17
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    So at twenty-five you could not have imagined that moment of refusal. What would you tell that younger self about his inadequacy?
17. 03:25
    Mosesshare moment

    That it is real. That he will always feel inadequate for what is required. But that the work does not depend on his eloquence or his strength. It depends on obedience. Obedience is simpler than we make it.
18. 03:44
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Simpler but not easier.
19. 03:45
    Mosesshare moment

    Not easier, no. You were emperor. You know this.
20. 03:50
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I became emperor at forty. Antoninus adopted me, I was Caesar, but even then I was still learning from him. He showed me what it meant to rule without cruelty, without display. To work constantly for the common good without needing praise for it.
21. 04:08
    Mosesshare moment

    Would you tell your twenty-five-year-old self about that example? To watch Antoninus more carefully?
22. 04:15
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I did watch him carefully. No, I would tell myself to trust that what I was learning would be enough. I spent so much energy worrying whether I was adequate to what might come. Worry is useless. Either the preparation is sufficient or it is not, and worry changes nothing.
23. 04:35
    Mosesshare moment

    And yet you worried.
24. 04:37
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I worried. I wrote constantly to remind myself not to worry. The Meditations are full of these reminders—to myself, from myself. Do not seek for things to happen as you wish, but wish for them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go smoothly.
25. 04:53
    Mosesshare moment

    But you are asking what would change if you told this to your younger self. Would he have worried less?
26. 05:00
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Probably not. That is the difficulty. The young self cannot receive what the old self has learned through living. He lacks the experience that gives the advice weight.
27. 05:12
    Mosesshare moment

    Then is the exercise pointless?
28. 05:15
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Perhaps. Or perhaps the point is to see what we still think matters after all that time. What would I insist on, if I could speak across the years? I think I would say: you will lose many people you love. Your children. Your wife. Prepare yourself not by hardening, but by remembering that they were never truly yours to keep. You were given time with them. It will not be as long as you wish.
29. 05:43
    Mosesshare moment

    That is a hard word to give a young man.
30. 05:46
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    All true words are hard. What of yours? You led your people for forty years. They quarreled with you, rebelled, built a golden calf while you were on the mountain receiving the Law. What would you tell yourself before any of that began?
31. 06:03
    Mosesshare moment

    I would tell myself that they will not change. Not in the way you hope. You will bring them out of Egypt, and three days later they will complain about the water. You will give them manna, and they will want meat. You will bring them to the borders of the promised land, and they will refuse to enter.
32. 06:29
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    And knowing this would have changed what?
33. 06:32
    Mosesshare moment

    My anger. I struck the rock in anger at Meribah, and that is why I did not enter the land myself. If I had known from the beginning that they would always be as they were, perhaps I would not have expected transformation. Perhaps I would not have been so angry when they remained stiff-necked.
34. 06:57
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    But you did not know, and so you learned it by enduring it. And that endurance was the work, was it not?
35. 07:03
    Mosesshare moment

    It was the work. Yes.
36. 07:06
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    So perhaps what I would tell my younger self is simply this: the work will be exactly as difficult as it is. Not more, not less. Your task is to meet it without complaint.
37. 07:19
    Mosesshare moment

    Without complaint. You make it sound simple.
38. 07:22
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    It is simple. I did not say it was easy. I complained often, in my private writings. I was tired, I was sick, I was surrounded by people who did not understand what was necessary. But the complaint was a weakness, not a strategy.
39. 07:38
    Mosesshare moment

    I complained to the Lord Himself. I said, why did you send me? I cannot carry all these people by myself. The burden is too heavy.
40. 07:50
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    And what did He answer?
41. 07:52
    Mosesshare moment

    He gave me seventy elders to help bear the load. He did not remove the burden. He gave me help to carry it. That is perhaps what I would tell my younger self: you will not carry this alone, though it will feel that way. Ask for help. Accept it when it comes.
42. 08:15
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I had counselors. Good men, most of them. But the decisions were mine. The loneliness of command does not end because you have advisors.
43. 08:24
    Mosesshare moment

    No. It does not end. There are decisions only you can make, and you will make them knowing they will cause suffering, and you will make them anyway because they are right.
44. 08:40
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Yes. That is leadership. I would tell my younger self: you will have to cause pain to people you care for. You will have to make choices that seem cruel but are necessary. Do not seek to avoid these choices. Accept them as part of the task.
45. 08:56
    Mosesshare moment

    I sentenced my own generation to die in the wilderness. Everyone who came out of Egypt except Joshua and Caleb. They would not enter the land when the Lord commanded it, and so they wandered until all of them fell. I led them to their graves.
46. 09:18
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Could you have done otherwise?
47. 09:19
    Mosesshare moment

    No. But I felt it. Every death. Every burial.
48. 09:25
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Then you did your duty with the full cost visible to you. That is all we can do. I buried my own children. I sent men to die in wars I did not choose. I could not look away from the cost. Looking away would have been a different betrayal.
49. 09:41
    Mosesshare moment

    So we tell our younger selves: this is what waits. The burden. The cost. The loneliness. Do it anyway.
50. 09:50
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Do it anyway. But also this: you will find moments of joy even in the difficulty. You will see things worth seeing. You will know you did not abandon the work when it would have been easier to walk away.
51. 10:05
    Mosesshare moment

    I saw the glory of the Lord. I spoke with Him as a man speaks with his friend, face to face. Would I tell my younger self about that?
52. 10:18
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Would he believe it?
53. 10:19
    Mosesshare moment

    No. He would think it madness. Or presumption. I would not have believed it myself.
54. 10:26
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Then we return to the beginning. The young cannot hear what only age has taught us. And perhaps that is itself the lesson. We each walk the path in our time. There are no shortcuts through experience.
55. 10:42
    Mosesshare moment

    And yet, if I could speak to him, that shepherd at twenty-five, I would say one more thing. I would tell him the years are not wasted. The desert will teach you what the palace could not. Trust the preparation, even when it looks like exile.
56. 11:04
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    And I would tell my younger self: the principles you are learning now, you will need them all. The tests will come. You will doubt yourself. But you will have done the work. And on your last day, you will be able to say that you lived according to nature and did not betray what you knew to be right. That will be enough.
57. 11:24
    Mosesshare moment

    Is that what you said? On your last day?
58. 11:27
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I do not know what I said. I was dying of plague in a military camp, far from Rome. But I hope I faced it without complaint. I had written often enough that death is natural, nothing to fear. The test was whether I believed my own words when the moment came.
59. 11:44
    Mosesshare moment

    I died on the mountain, looking at the land I would not enter. The Lord showed it to me—all of it, from Dan to the Negev. And then I died there. I do not know if that was mercy or judgment. Perhaps both.
60. 12:05
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Both, I think. We receive what we have earned, and also what we need. The two are often the same.
61. 12:11
    Mosesshare moment

    So we tell our younger selves: prepare for the work. It will cost everything. It will be worth it. And you will not understand that until the end.
62. 12:24
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Yes. That is the message. I doubt they would listen. But it is true.