OPINION (AN COLÚN): Remaining calm in the face of change

LAST Sunday of course was Palm Sunday. The day before Palm Sunday Jesus was in Bethany, the place where he had raised his friend Lazarus from the dead.
In Bethany a dinner is given in Christ's honour. "Then Mary," it says in John's Gospel, "took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of perfume." It is a charming, peaceful scene. The act of wiping Christ's feet with one's hair shows a deep reverence and love for the Creator of the Universe; a reverence and love which is allied to a sense of gratitude that the Universe in fact exists. Yes, there is much suffering in the world, but we can always feel the emotions of gratitude and awe in the presence of its beauty. Judas, the cold moralist and hypocrite, objects. "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” he asks. “It was worth a year's wages.” In fact Judas doesn't care about the poor. He is in charge of the money bag and doesn't want to see its funds diminished - “as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.”
A large crowd of Jews come to the house in Bethany and express their desire to follow Christ. The chief priests are jealous when they see this reverence. They have been plotting to kill Jesus, and now plan to kill Lazarus as well.
“The next day,” it says in Chapter 12, Verse 12, “the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!' Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it...”
Just five days later the crowds of Jerusalem would be baying for his blood. Stirred up by their religious leaders the crowds shout “Crucify him!” Five days earlier they had been placing palm branches across Jesus' path (palm branches symbolised goodness and victory); now they are either filled with hatred or indifference as he's taken by the Romans to be put through the most horrific and cruel death imaginable.
As we read these passages we can be reminded of the fickleness of crowds and how their emotions can be made course in one way or the other by the pressure of events and the influence of their leaders. It can also remind us of the fickle nature of life itself; how one day we feel on top of the world and everything is going well, and the next we are being made endure a number of challenges. One day people are praising us, the next they are criticising and belittling us. One day we are popular; the next we are subjected to the cold wind of indifference. How we respond to these ups and downs defines us as people.
The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius insisted on not letting life make us behave beneath ourselves. He insisted on remaining kind. Kindness, he believed, was the wisest antidote for, and response to, life’s assaults. In "Meditations" he returns again and again to kindness and the importance of extending it to everyone equally at all times. He believed that when people are being most cruel they are being most irrational, and an appeal should be made to their reason and dignity, qualities which lie beneath the surface in the heart of every human being. By reminding people of their inherent reason and dignity we are reminding them of their inner qualities which they should be aspiring to.
Aurelius also believed that having a healthy relationship with our mortality was an important attribute to learn. He wrote:
"You should bear in mind constantly that death has come to men of all kinds, men with varied occupations and various ethnicities… We too will inevitably end up where so many [of our heroes] have gone… Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates… brilliant intellectuals, high-minded men, hard workers, men of ingenuity, self-confident men, men who mocked the very transience and impermanence of human life…. men long dead and buried…Only one thing is important: to behave throughout your life toward the liars and crooks around you with kindness, honesty, and justice."
He said we remain kind by keeping “the purity, lucidity, moderation, and justice of your mind” from being tarnished by the actions of those we encounter, no matter how disagreeable and afflicted by irrationality they may be. "Suppose someone standing by a clear, sweet spring,” he says, “were to curse it: it just keeps right on bringing drinkable water bubbling up to the surface. Even if he throws mud or dung in it, before long the spring disperses the dirt and washes it out, leaving no stain. So how are you to have the equivalent of an ever-flowing spring? If you preserve your self-reliance at every hour, and your kindness, simplicity, and morality."
By being moderate in our habits and embracing an attitude of gratitude rather than bitterness we can remain who we truly are.