Aug 16, 2024

Reflections on Existence and Meaning

Meditations 8.20

Nature is like someone throwing a ball in the air, gauging its rise and arc-and where it will fall. And what does the ball gain as it flies upward? Or lose when it plummets to earth?

What does the bubble gain from its existence? Or lose by bursting? And the same for a candle.

• Meditations 8.20

What is Marcus Aurelius trying to tell? This "parable" is hard to understand, and I can only assume what it is saying.

It is saying that nature is ever-changing, but that it is an "isolated" system and nothing changes inside it. For nature doesn't do anything outside the norms of logos. [Nature is like...]

It might also be saying that existence per se doesn't mean anything. [What does the bubble...]. But I believe that it is what you do with that existence that matters; the purpose is the work that is to be done, which creates meaning for itself (here I borrow from the Camus).

We could also look at it from another side and analyse the metaphor in human life: we do not gain anything from success or lose anything from failure. It simply doesn't matter, and it is natural.

Reflecting on such topics is highly impersonal, subjective and difficult. One can only touch the surface without tiring or experiencing existential dread.