. . . For no one can be styled happy
who is beyond the influence of truth, and consequently a happy life is
unchangeable, and is founded upon a true and trustworthy discernment; for the
mind is uncontaminated and freed from all evils only when it is able to escape
not merely from wounds but also from scratches, when it will always be able to
maintain the position which it has taken up, and defend it even against the
angry assaults of Fortune.
For with regard to sensual pleasures,
though they were to surround one on every side, and use every means of assault,
trying to win over the mind by caresses and making trial of every conceivable stratagem
to attract either our entire selves or our separate parts, yet what mortal that
retains any traces of human origin would wish to be tickled day and night, and,
neglecting his mind, to devote himself to bodily enjoyments?
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 5 (tr Stewart)
I have learned
to see the conditions of my life as always being subject to change, sometimes
slow and subtle, sometimes sudden and drastic, but almost always in ways I could
never have expected. If someone had told me thirty years ago what I would end
up seeing, what I would be asked to live through, or where I would be now, I
would surely have laughed it off.
Hindsight
now allows me to view such things more openly and broadly, but I must still
admit to feeling very uncertain about what can still come. Nothing about the
world around me should be taken as a given, and anything can be completely
different in the briefest moment.
Because
the world will never be the same from day to day does not, however, mean that
there cannot be something unchanging and constant about my own thinking and
living. What can remain stable about myself, if I only so choose, is standing
firm in my sense of what is right and wrong, and the way in which I go about
estimating anything and everything in my circumstances.
The
happy man is not himself literally unmoving, since he himself always acts, but rather he
does not allow those actions to be determined by the whims of good or bad
Fortune. He rules himself, and he navigates his own way through both calm and
stormy seas. He knows what he is about, and he knows that, whether he will live
for a long or a short time, no one can take that from him.
The
details hardly matter anymore, but what I once saw as the happiest moment of my
life was not really happy, because it was just about a deeply pleasant
convergence of events. What I later saw as the most miserable moment of my life
was not really miserable, because it was just about a deeply unpleasant
convergence of events. I felt loved in one, and abandoned in another. I now see
that I would have been much better served to be the same man at both times,
instead of becoming two totally different men.
Whenever
I pursued a path of life where I longed for pleasure and ran from pain, I was
always so sure that I was firmly in control of what I did. It seemed easy to
pick one and reject the other, but I had already unwittingly abandoned any
possibility of self-mastery. This had occurred because I estimated my value by
what happened, not by what I did with what happened.
I love
how Seneca compares constant pleasure seeking to being constantly tickled. A
pleasant sensation quickly gives way to the recognition that we are powerless
in the face of it, that we no longer control ourselves, but that we are
letting ourselves be controlled. The constancy of character surrenders to the
flux of feelings.
As a
child, my father tried to teach me how to not feel ticklish. “It’s simple,” he
said. “Don’t think of someone else tickling you, but imagine you’re tickling
yourself.” I never could quite get the hang of that particular ability, which
seemed like some profound Zen wisdom or Jedi mind trick, but I do understand
the principle in so many aspects of life. Rule what is unchanging within
yourself, or let yourself be ruled by everything that changes.
Written in 6/2009
Image: Johannes Moreelse, Heraclitus (c. 1630)
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