Help! The Best Time of My Life Feels So Terrible! (Marcus Aurelius - Meditations)

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Book I: Stoicism, Again… and Again… and Again

I was first introduced to Marcus Aurelius and Stoic philosophy probably around 2019. My now-fiancé, then-boyfriend, Chad, had become more and more committed to mindfulness, meditation, and to learning about Stoicism. He had started meditating daily and would read a passage from The Daily Stoic before bed every night.

At the time of Chad’s contemplative journey inward, I kept busy with my own thing. (I was working on my novel pretty ferociously and finding my fulfillment there, or was preoccupied enough.) So I’d just watch him in amusement when he’d meditate in the corner of our room. Sometimes, I’d ask him to read the Daily Stoic passage aloud. “Nice,” I’d say when he finished. “I can get with that.”

The Daily Stoic is 366 meditations/quotes from different Stoic philosophers meant to be read on a daily basis.

After a year of just observing him, I noticed how Chad’s mood improved. He’s never been very temperamental to begin with, so the difference wasn’t like night and day. There was just a new and unique calmness to him that I wanted a piece of. But it was weird. That piece, which he would otherwise give me because he loves me so much, was so obviously his. And I couldn’t just take it from him, and he couldn’t just give it to me. It wasn’t like asking for the jacket off his back. I had to work to get what he had. This warmth and serenity and something I can only describe as… honest contentment. An aura.

Now here comes 2020. 2020 brought a pandemic upon the globe and brought out the literal worst in people. This includes me, too.

I’d see someone enter a grocery store without their face mask and wish a plague upon their bloodline. Or I’d see another post of someone supporting some insane pseudoscience and wish a piano fell on that person’s head. I was just so annoyed all the time and thought the worst things about people I both didn’t know and people I knew well. I didn’t like this side of me. This side that wished ill upon people, even if I was “joking.” This side that was so testy and quick to condemn others.

Needless to say, I was pretty open to mindfulness and learning about Stoic philosophy because I so desperately needed some sort of tenet that could just help me… fucking chill out. I wanted to be more like Chad. Calm, collected, contemplative, and compassionate when it all feels impossible.

So I started to join the meditations here and there. 10-minute sessions with the voice of Sam Harris in the background. Dipping my toe in the shallow end. 2020 passed this way; I was meditating every so often and exposing myself to more Stoic philosophy, but was never fully engrossed in the whole thing. I’d listen to whatever one-off podcast and try to learn more about Stoicism when I felt like it. Then I’d “fall off the Stoic wagon,” neglecting everything I’d just learned, and would refuse to deepen my understanding for no apparent reason.

But really, since we’re admitting things here, it was just easier to be bitter and wrapt in fury than it was to practice mindfulness and compassion. I didn’t want to be compassionate and give others the benefit of the doubt. I overthought and was angry and anxious constantly; simply suffering because it was the easiest thing to do. This is how the year passed.

When January 2021 finally hit, I decided to re-commit because I had noticed my mental health was rapidly declining. At the time, I was so engrossed in a stressful job that was chipping away at me, became increasingly tired and adverse to doing anything outside of resting, and growing guilty at how little I was writing or doing anything creative.

Both international and national atrocities were a dime a dozen, and the one thing that could connect me to my loved ones during a pandemic (my phone) was the very thing that would create a cognitive dissonance and sense of dread so palpable, I could barely breathe.

Everything from my job to the egregious political circus that was unfolding on a daily basis started affecting me on a cognitive level. I had to started to forget things I’d said just a minute before, or would ask the exact same question and then ask, “Did I ask that already?” I’d forget where I parked my car almost every day, and would have no recollection of what my friends or Chad said to me just seconds before.

I knew it was time to fix something and decided I should re-commit to mindfulness and Stoic philosophies.

I started to read from The Daily Stoic and literally made a New Year’s resolution to meditate every day (in full transparency, I didn’t make it past mid-February). But I exposed myself to more mindfulness practices, Zen Buddhist ideas, and read more books that were aligned with my spiritual/philosophic journey. I was able to patch up all my cuts and bleeding with this mindful, Stoic bandaid. So I wasn’t so much seeping as I was… swelling.

This bandaid lasted until the Fall.

Book II: Every Empire Falls

Fall 2021 hits, and I started to become… frighteningly angry and the worst version of myself. I attributed this breakdown to a combination of existential dread, an unprecedented amount of trauma porn and doom-scrolling, a stressful work culture, and a boss that was challenged my sanity every waking moment.

These things rendered me exhausted, constantly. Unfulfilled creatively. Overworked and deflated like the saddest, forlorn bike tire. Inconsistent with my habits, hobbies, and relationships. Anti-social to an extent I hadn’t experienced before. Confused about my life’s direction. The list goes and on.

And I just kept living this way for a while.

Going into Winter 2021, this feeling of untethered-ness has only gotten worse. And this is supposed to be one of the greatest times of my life.

I’m in my mid-twenties—a period so often cited as everyone’s best and most defining. A fun and memorable time where we’ve got some things figured out, but the grace to not have it all figured out. I’m no longer as cringey as I was when I was a teenager or even in my early twenties. I’ve got a handle on my makeup (thank God), and in the best shape of my life. I’m weeks away from getting married to the love of my life, a love that truly precedes its logic (Me? Really?). I’m planning the wedding of my dreams with all the glitz and pre-wedding events and florals and dresses and sentiment and memories. I have a home that’s of use and joy and safety and comfort to me. A home that people describe as “aesthetic”, whatever that means. I was recently promoted and making the most money I ever have in my life. I have the most amazing friends that make me laugh until it hurts. The means to travel, treat my friends and family, and try new experiences.

The list of small and big accomplishments go on and on. On paper, I’m checking all the boxes. On paper, I’m successfully building the strongest “empire” that is my life.

And still…

I fear I’m becoming undone. Slowly, but surely, like a sand castle in the wind. My mental health has been on a downward trend for a very, very long time. And it’s starting to unravel in front of me despite my best efforts to keep it all together.

I’ve noticed the way my anxiety and daily angst has affected Chad, and then I become resentful of myself. It’s a cycle of self-rebuke and unbelievable amounts of pressure, all packaged into one very high-functioning she-thing.

I don’t recognize myself in the mirror these days. Something has been toppling within me, and for the first time in almost 8 years, I feel myself slipping back into the serious depression I once fought so hard to overcome. I’m more high-strung than usual. Sick to my stomach every morning before I even clock in with this growing anger and pressure. Stressed and stretched thin beyond belief. Working for the weekend and when the weekend comes, overcome with too much exhaustion and confusion and pain to even enjoy it.

But I’ve just been pushing myself beyond reason to “break this spell” and silently hoping it will dissolve one day soon. I haven’t been embracing or trying to understand any of my anxiety. I’ve just been trying new and old coping mechanisms (hello, again, nicotine!).

I knew I needed something to… rejuvenate? defibrillate? … honestly? lobotomize me. I was (and still struggle with) being crushed by my thoughts. My never-ending monkey-brain; it’s just inundated with ideas of perfection, productivity, doing more and more and more with less stamina and less energy and less passion. I’m plagued with tasks and my brain shares a room with existential dread.

Book III: Sand

Clearly, I needed something to help me quiet all the noise. I knew I needed something without all the bells and whistles of contemporary self-help books. I needed something cut and dry. Quiet, yet loud. I needed something actually fucking helpful.

So I picked up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. And at least for today, at least for right now, I feel hopeful. I feel better.

But what does one even say about Meditations?

“Aurelius sounds a bit pretentious at times.”

“The prose was lackluster and there’s hardly any plot!”

I can’t imagine really critiquing Meditations. I guess to start, Meditations comprises 12 books; each book containing a few dozen short passages, or meditations, on life, compassion, Nature, justice, doing the right thing, and the transience of all things. If we’re really “reviewing” this work, the one criticism I might have is that you sometimes have to read the same passage up to four times because of how profound it is, how contemplative it is, or how confusing it is. Aurelius was never writing a book. He never intended to publish these ad hoc passages, and for that reason, some of the composition is actually a little tricky and requires a double-take as I mentioned.

But when you get past the journal-like nature and language, there is such a clarity about what he believes in and shares. Here are just a few of my favorite passages from the book:

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” (4.7)

“Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good.” (4.17)

“To love what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.” (7.57)

“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.” (9.13)

I mean, it’s probably some of the simplest things I’ve ever read, but it has the power to settle some of the most complicated emotions. I could feel my angst and dread start to soften a bit reading his words. I could feel my own grip loosen, my jaw slacken. I would read a passage or two, and immediately feel better about whatever bullshit thought that was taking up space in my mind. I would genuinely laugh at myself, wondering what it was or why it was that I was just… trippin’ so damn much. There is no need. Everything that happens is meant for me, because the logos (in Meditations, providence, fate, Nature, life force) deemed it so. And I should love it. And I do. I just forget sometimes because I am, after all, human.

I will say, though, that Aurelius, regardless of how much he’s done for me, isn’t totally off the hook. I’m still trying to reconcile how he so firmly believes that everything that’s ordained by the logos should be embraced and accepted. It’s hard for me to trust this idea when such travesties like genocide or pedophilia exists. What do the logos have to say about that? I wish Aurelius proposed an answer for those things. If Aurelius explains this somewhere, I missed it.

Still, I believe Meditations to be a great help to those seeking answers to some of life’s questions.

“How should I act in this situation?”

“Should I just forgive this person? Do I deserve forgiveness?”

“Why is this happening to me?”

“How should I react to this person who transgressed me?”

One of the main things Meditations helped me understand and accept is that I am literally going to die one day. It could be fifty years from now; it could be tomorrow. So why the hell am I so worked up about this or that or the weather or what someone thinks or if the napkins at our wedding should be pink or white? The answer is that I shouldn’t be worked up at all. Why should I choose suffering? When I have the power and access to joy? To that aura Chad has?

Reading Meditations is like getting your really greasy and mangled hair brushed out. It’s like smelling vinegar. I would recommend it to anyone who suffers mentally, or struggles with pressure, worrying, paranoia, and existential dread. To anyone who needs reminders about the transience of their own existence on this earth. Do I think I’m suddenly “cured”? Of course not. But it’s a start.

Earlier I described myself a sand castle in the wind. Becoming undone.

But maybe that’s what I just am. Just sand. Slipping through. Fucking infinitesimal. Maybe I’m not becoming undone. But am simply… doing. Falling apart, falling together. I’m not really sure. And I suppose that’s okay.

Before, this question of what I’m doing on Earth and what the hell all of this means would send me into an all-night depression and emotional spiral. Tonight, I decide to shrug it off. I decide to go hug Chad. Tell him I love him.