All Is Fluid

The Daily Stoic for November 9th, “All Is Fluid”.

“The universe is change. Life is opinion.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 4.3.4b

I love those words by Marcus Aurelius. They sound almost as poetry to my ears. And I definitely agree. The universe is in constant change. Life can change in seconds.

All Is Fluid

John Lennon is my favorite Beatle. Not just because he was the most experimental and adventurous composer of the four, but also he was the most politically active. He became a legend not just because he was killed, but because how he was involved in the movements of his time.

However, probably the best post-Beatles album for me is “All things must pass” by George Harrison. Musically, the album is a masterpiece. But apart from that, this album shows all of George’s spiritual and Asian-influenced overtones, and deals with acceptance of external events, letting go, and not judging. Concepts that seem pretty stoic in my mind.

What I really love is how the whole album seems to revolve around the concept of change. Of how things are ephemeral. It’s curious how this concept is quite tied to today’s stoic meditation.

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day…

George Harrison – All things must pass (1970)

We tend to think about ourselves as static entities. However, we are not the person we were 30 years ago, or 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. We might not probably be the same person we were one year ago.

It’s not easy to accept change so easily. At least, not for me. But I think once you accept that idea, it frees you from falling into some traps, like the trap of “I deserve what I have now” or the trap of “but this is who I am because it’s who I’ve always been”.

Conclusion

Today’s Daily Stoic, “All Is Fluid”, discusses change, and how what we take today for granted, all those things that form who we are today, are ephemeral and, as George Harrison put it, “all things must pass”.