#29

I have been thinking a lot about Aurelius' 29th meditation quite a bit. I really enjoy the language he uses, its almost poetic. The first line says to discard your misperceptions which means a lot to me because I feel like so much of how we live our lives is based on snap judgments and assumptions. It's such a hard thing to do though, its so easy to hold onto misperceptions and let them cloud our thinking. That's definitely one thing I want to work on for myself is being more accepting and more forgiving. Next he says, stop being jerked around like a puppet. I guess I've explained before that I see a lot of people living and doing things for all the wrong reasons and all the wrong people. The rest of number 29 says, limit yourself to the present, understand what happens to you-to others, analyze what exists, break it all down, material and cause, anticipate your final hours, other people's mistakes? Leave them to their mistakes. Most of this really sums up how I want to live my life. I want to live in the present and not fret about the future or get caught up on the past and things that can't be changed. This year, especially in my foundations classes I spent a lot of time challenging our perceptions of things and manipulating interpretations with materials so I thought that one particular line fit in really well with my educational goals in life, perfectly really. Everything in art to me in material and meaning, so why not in some ways pull that into my everyday life. Finally, I think this meditation reminds me to let go of the things I can't change, like my mortality or other people's choices. I've really fallen in love with this meditation and I think it was the most valuable reading to me this semester.