9781945186240

19. How they act when they eat and sleep and mate and defecate and all
the rest. Then when they order and exult, or rage and thunder from on high.
And yet, just consider the things they submitted to a moment ago, and the
reasons for it—and the things they’ll submit to again before very long.
20. Each of us needs what nature gives us, when nature gives it.
21. “The earth knows longing for the rain, the sky/knows longing . . .”
And the world longs to create what will come to be. I tell it “I share your
longing.”
(And isn’t that what we mean by “inclined to happen”?)
22. Possibilities:
i. To keep on living (you should be used to it by now)
ii. To end it (it was your choice, after all)
iii. To die (having met your obligations)
Those are the only options. Reason for optimism.
23. Keep always before you that “this is no different from an empty
field,” and the things in it are the same as on a mountaintop, on the
seashore, wherever. Plato gets to the heart of it: “fencing a sheepfold in the
mountains, and milking goats or sheep.”
24. My mind. What is it? What am I making of it? What am I using it
for?
Is it empty of thought?
Isolated and torn loose from those around it?
Melted into flesh and blended with it, so that it shares its urges?
25. When a slave runs away from his master, we call him a fugitive
slave. But the law of nature is a master too, and to break it is to become a
fugitive.
To feel grief, anger or fear is to try to escape from something decreed by
the ruler of all things, now or in the past or in the future. And that ruler is