Meditation VII.21 - The Bleak Horizon - Translated by George Long and rewritten by Russell McNeil
Near is your forgetfulness of all things; and near the forgetfulness of you by all.(1)
Explanation
(1) Life is not only impossibly brief, whatever impressions life makes on our consciousness are erased at death. There is no life after death, and nothing about you endures. And soon too the impressions you have made in life will be erased from the pages of history. This bleak nihilistic message is not intended to provoke despair, as it certainly will if life were otherwise as meaningless as these phrases seem to convey. On the contrary. Life lived rightly will be filled with peace and joy - if we live with and within nature's design.
Russell McNeil, PhD, is the author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained by Skylight Paths Publishing. The unpublished selections presented in this Blog are provided as supplemental material to the published selections which are annotated and explained in the book. The published selections are referenced in this Blog by page number and section.
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