Boethius, the Consolation 2.8

“If Fortune should thus defend herself to you,” said Philosophy, “you would have nothing, I think, to utter on the other part. But if you have any just defense for your complaining, you must put it forward. We will grant you the opportunity of speaking.”

Then I answered, “Those arguments have a fair form and are clothed with all the sweetness of speech and of song. When a man listens to them, they delight him, but only so long. The wretched have a deeper feeling of their misfortunes. Wherefore, when these pleasing sounds fall no longer upon the ear, this deep-rooted misery again weighs down the spirit.”

“It is so,” she said. “For these are not the remedies for your sickness, but in some sort are the applications for your grief which chafes against its cure. When the time comes, I will apply those that are to penetrate deeply.

“But that you may not be content to think yourself wretched, remember how many and how great have been the occasions of your good fortune. I will not describe how, when you lost your father, men of the highest rank received you into their care. How you were chosen by the chief men in the state to be allied to them by marriage, and you were dear to them before you were ever closely related, which is the most valuable of all relationships. Who hesitated to pronounce you most fortunate for the greatness of your wives’ families, for their virtues, and for your blessings in your sons too?” . . .

—from Book 2, Prose 3

The image of the glass being half full or half empty has become so common that we hardly pay any attention to it, even as we may create new applications and variations of it to keep ourselves amused. This is unfortunate, because it reveals something very important about our attitudes to our circumstances. How are we distinguishing between what is present and what is absent, and the good or bad found in such presence or absence?

Boethius mourns the absence of what was once present, even as he neglects to consider the very blessing of that presence to begin with. While he bore the death of his father at a young age, the world still fell into place for him. Those in power took him under their wings, and they groomed him for greatness. He received an education of the highest sort, and was even welcomed directly into their powerful families. He had been born into the world of the elite, and he maintained his place within it.

Boethius first married Elpis, the daughter of Consul Festus, though she died while still very young. Boethius next married Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus, the very man who had adopted him and raised him. She bore him two sons, who themselves rose to prominence. There are many stories about how his wife was his rock, and his sons were his joy.

Even in the face of loss, he found the support of a new family, who treated him not only as one of their own, but provided him with every success he could possibly dream of. He certainly remembers this now, but only because it is gone. Does the fact that it has passed, as all things must eventually do, remove any of the good that came from it?

My own opportunities have never been on as grand a scale as those of Boethius, and I sincerely doubt I would ever actually want them to be. I was never made to be esteemed, and I was never made to be important. Nature, I suspect, had something different in mind. Yet I always had the love of family, I had the wide world shown to me when I was still very young, and I was constantly given every possible chance to follow my heart. I was encouraged when I was down, tolerated when I was stubborn.

In the midst of this, deeply painful things did indeed occur. I confronted loneliness, rejection, and betrayal, not in the big things, but in the small, everyday things. I felt dismayed, and I allowed it to degrade into a lifetime in the company of the Black Dog. The sickness in my soul became a sickness in my body. I cried, I thrashed about, and I did desperate things.

Throughout it all, however, life had already given me so much, even as I too often looked the other way. It wasn’t just the memory of past blessings that could give me comfort, but the fact that all those past blessings were the very means for me order and rule myself now.

Symmachus had given Boethius access to the greatest wisdom of the world. My own family had done no less. It wasn’t gone now, just because other things had gone wrong. It was needed all the more now, precisely because other things had gone wrong. A legacy will only be as good as we continue to make use of it.

It may not be the same now as it was then, but everything from then can make the now more possible to bear.

Shadowlands, a semi-fictionalized account of the later life of C.S Lewis, has long been one of my favorite films. I always remember these lines:

Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore, only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice, as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal. 

Written in 7/2015