Notes from the Hatch: Equinoxes, Eclipses and Equanimity

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Hey y’all! It’s Carmen here.

Recently I beheld the beginning and the end of a day, by which I mean both the sunrise and sunset. That might be normal for some of you, but it’s not for me. Rarely am I early to bed, so therefore rarely early to rise, and by the time I do get up, the sun is already blazing. But the other day, I awoke much earlier than normal and saw a golden glow at the eastern tree line. The day passed, and about twelve hours later, I looked in the west and saw the light falling and fading. I felt a tremendous sense of balance. After a long, brutally hot inferno of a summer in Texas, there was such relief in the thought that darkness and coolness could be an equal complement with the light and the heat.

Thinking about balance led me to one of my favorite concepts: equanimity—that evenness, calmness, the ability to regard the tumult of the world without being overturned. This quote from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations sprang to mind: “Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet.” Marcus Aurelius, as you may know, was an adherent of stoicism, and this feels quintessentially stoical—this call to be a rocky promontory unaffected by the sea, to be like the cliffside that endures, no matter what comes.