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October 28th

WE  WERE    MADE    FOR EACH    OTHER

“You’ll more    quickly find    an  earthly thing   kept    from    the earth   than    you will    a   person  cut off from

other   human   beings.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS,   MEDITATIONS,    9.9.3

aturally, Marcus Aurelius and the rest of the Stoics were not familiar with Newtonian physics. But
they knew that what went up must come down. That’s the analogy he’s using here: our mutual
interdependence with our fellow human beings is stronger than the law of gravity.
Philosophy attracts introverts. The study of human nature can make you aware of other people’s faults
and can breed contempt for others. So do struggle and difficulty—they isolate us from the world.
But none of that changes that we are, as Aristotle put it, social animals. We need each other. We must
be there for each other. We must take care of each other (and to allow others to care for us in return). To
pretend otherwise is to violate our nature, to be more or less than what it means to be a human being.