Something happens in the second right after you do something for someone. It is small and it goes by fast. Marcus Aurelius watched that second closely enough to find three different men inside it.
Let’s go through his three.
“One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down to his account as a favour conferred. Another is not ready to do this, but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows what he has done. A third in a manner does not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit. As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.”
trans. George Long
All three men did the service. The act is the same in every case. Marcus is saying the difference sits entirely in what happens afterwards, inside the man, where nobody can see it.
The first man mentions it. He has done you a favour and he makes sure you know. What it costs him: the service has turned into a transaction, and now he needs you to settle.
The second man says nothing and keeps the count in his head. His cost is heavier and quieter. From outside he looks exactly like the third man, so nobody will ever correct him, and he will feel it when the debt goes unpaid.
The third man has already moved on. He is the vine — it gives fruit, then it gives fruit again, and there is no moment in between where it stands waiting.
So what are we aiming at. We want to be the vine. Marcus chose a vine on purpose, because a vine cannot keep a count even if it wanted to. He is not asking us to keep a better count. He is describing someone who does not have one.
One more voice here, because three men in a row can look like a ladder. Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen teacher, said that in our everyday life our thinking is ninety-nine percent self-centred. Ninety-nine out of a hundred. Take that number seriously and the first two men are not options you choose between. They are the standing condition, and the counting runs whether or not you decide anything.
That tells us what the vine is. The vine is not a better counter. It is not counting at all, which makes it a different category rather than a higher rung. There is nothing here to climb. What is available is to see the counting while it runs.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- Someone asks you something, you explain it, and now they know it.
- You fix something at home that nobody asked you to fix.
- You cover for someone and say nothing about it.
In all three, the second to watch is the same one — right after, before the other person says anything. Something moves in there. A small wish to be thanked. A note taken quietly. Or nothing at all, and you are already elsewhere.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to make it come out the third way. Watch what moves, and leave it as it is.