. . . “I need not speak of those things
that are familiar, so I pass over the honors which are denied to most old men,
but were granted to you when yet young. I choose to come to the unrivaled crown
of your good fortune. If the enjoyment of anything mortal can weigh at all in the
balance of good fortune, can your memory of one great day ever be extinguished by
any mass of accumulated ills?
“I mean that day when you saw your two
sons proceed forth from your house as consuls together, amid the crowding
senators, the eager and applauding populace. When they sat down in the seats of
honor and you delivered the speech of congratulation to the king, gaining
thereby glory for your talent and your eloquence. When in the circus you sat in
the place of honor between the consuls, and by a display of lavishness worthy
of a triumphing general, you pleased to the full the multitude who were crowded
around in expectation.
“While Fortune then favored you, it
seems you flaunted her, though she cherished you as her own darling. You
carried off a bounty that she had never granted to any citizen before. Will you
then balance accounts with Fortune? This is the first time that she has looked
upon you with a grudging eye. If you think of your happy and unhappy
circumstances both in number and in kind, you will not be able to say that you
have not been fortunate until now. And if you think that you were not fortunate
because these things have passed away which then seemed to bring happiness,
these things too are passing away, which you now hold to be miserable, wherefore
you cannot think that you are wretched now.
“Is this your first entrance upon the
stage of life? Are you come here unprepared and a stranger to the scene? Do you
think that there is any certainty in the affairs of mankind, when you know that
often one swift hour can utterly destroy a man? For though the chances of life
may seldom be depended upon, yet the last day of a lifetime seems to be the end
of Fortune's power, even if it stays that long. What, do you think, should we
therefore say, that you desert her by dying, or that she deserts you by leaving
you?”
—from
Book 2, Prose 3
Lady
Philosophy is still trying to explain to Boethius that the balance of good and
bad fortune is hardly as unfair and oppressive as he might wish to think. The
value of what has been taken away need not outweigh the value of what was
given.
She
especially wishes to remind Boethius of a moment in his life where absolutely
everything came together to his advantage, where every aspect seemed perfect,
and he could have asked for nothing more. Will he not be willing to accept a
change in circumstances now, for the first time, and at the end of his life, to
have had that complete moment then?
I can’t
help but think of the quite melodramatic, but still deeply moving, lines from
Mel Gibson’s Braveheart:
Aye.
Fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live . . . at least a while. And dying
in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that,
for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that
they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom?
We will
often speak of the “best days of our lives”, whether they are births,
graduations, weddings, times of great joy, moments of achievement or success,
or, for some, perhaps even a nobility in death. How many other times would I
gladly surrender to have any of those times, how many tiresome, frustrating, or
even agonizing days for a single best day?
For
Boethius, that “best day” was when his sons received the office of consul, when
everyone cheered their successes, and when people had nothing but praise for
his own abilities, fine words, and generosity. Yes, the deeply satisfying
moment did pass, but then so will every moment, including the deeply painful ones.
If I am
so stubborn as to insist that a good day past cannot make me satisfied, because it
has gone, then a bad day now can hardly make me miserable either, because it
too will soon be gone.
If I had
to pick my own “best day”, there would be two candidates. I’m not sure I’ve
ever spoken about the details of either time to the people I know now, because
they would surely find my choices odd, and the people who were involved back
then will most likely not even remember. Still, they were both days when
nothing could go wrong.
Now if I
honestly wonder whether I would still be willing to pay for those days with all
the pain that came later, I surprise myself a bit by accepting that I would
certainly do so. I would even take just one moment from each of those days, and
be willing to sacrifice all of the rest. That doesn’t make the suffering any
less, but it makes the contentment all the more.
Written in 7/2015
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