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Friday, April 20, 2018

Boethius, The Consolation 1.11


“Are such your experiences, and do they sink into your soul?” she asked.

“Do you listen only as the dull ass to the lyre? Why do you weep? Wherefore flow your tears?

“Speak, nor keep secrets in your heart. If you expect a physician to help you, you must lay bare your wound.”

—from Book 1, Prose 4

I take only these very few lines as a separate entry, because they are charged with meaning for me. Whenever I reread the Consolation, I always end up stopping right here for a moment, and I gather my bearings.

First, what is it that is driving me to despair? Second, what am I actually doing to find a cure? It is the very act of despair, of course, the very assumption that there can be no comfort, that leads me to think that there can be no solution.

It isn’t necessarily a sign of personal weakness to be lost, but I am certainly giving up entirely when I fail to seek help, when I don’t ask for directions, or when I don’t bother to understand those directions. If they make no sense, I should not be afraid to ask again.

My wife tells me this is a distinctly masculine failing, an unwillingness to admit that I can’t do it all for myself. I don’t know if it’s only a manly sort of weakness, but I do know it is a very foolish thing. The strength of self-reliance is never the same thing as stubbornly closing myself off to all the sources of inspiration and wisdom that are around me.

Now how often have I stared blindly at a map, trying to get somewhere, while not even knowing where I am to begin with? What shame would there be in rolling down the window, admitting I am befuddled, and asking a local to point the way?

Despair for me, and the accompanying Black Dog, have always been about seeing everything that’s wrong, and recognizing nothing that’s right.

When I perceived everything about my life going down the tubes, the few people who stuck with me offered all sorts of advice. Much of it suggested denial, repression, or mere force of will. I was grateful for the concern, but I saw immediately how that was not the right path. That was about dodging reality, not about managing it.

I saw red, for example, when someone urged me to make myself rich and famous, and then I could stick it to all the people who had done me wrong. Someone else told me I should pray harder to make myself tougher, and someone else told me it was just all about getting seriously medicated by a doctor. My favorite was someone who told me I should just stop caring, and then there would be no more worries.

I saw some misguided advice, and decided that there could never be any good advice. I clammed up, and said as little as I possibly could.

One day, I somehow ended up sitting with someone who wouldn’t let me weasel my way out of it.

“I can’t help you if you won’t even tell me what’s wrong!”

When I was child, my mother would ask me where it hurt, and I would point right to the spot, whether I had twisted my ankle, bumped my head, skinned my knee, or felt sad. If I felt sad, I would point to my heart. She always had a remedy.

Lady Philosophy is like the mother who can only help you if you point to where it hurts. Nothing will ever turn out right, if I cannot first admit what is wrong. There can be no diagnosis without revealing the signs and symptoms.

Boethius will go on for some time now about his worries, but I don’t think he’s just complaining. He’s finally explaining what is ripping him apart.


Written in 5/2015

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