“Whenever you have trouble getting up in the morning, remind yourself that you’ve been made by nature for the purpose of working with others, whereas even unthinking animals share sleeping. And it’s our own natural purpose that is more fitting and more satisfying.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.12
In today’s quote from The Daily Stoic, Marcus Aurelius reminds us that in the overall grand scope of the universe, we seem to have been designed by nature to work together. It’s what we were made to do, more than any other animal on Earth.
Thus we have a “higher obligation… to each other” says author Ryan Holiday. That obligation is to join forces and do good things together. Holiday highlights the concept of praxeis koinonikas apodidonai, which he defines as “to render works held in common”.
We are naturally designed to build things together — and not just towers and giant feats of engineering and other physical things — but also projects of all types, and even ‘grand experiments’ of society that have been going on for hundreds of years or longer.
Regardless of your belief in a higher power or not, our natural purpose in this grand design appears to be to work together with other humans. So we should embrace that, and take joy in it!
Wake up each morning with that thought in mind, don’t hit the snooze button, and go do great things with whoever will join you, in whatever your duty is, wherever you are in the world.
