Boethius, The Consolation 2.13

. . . “How many are they, do you think, who would think themselves raised to heaven if the smallest part of the remnants of your good fortune fell to them? This very place, which you call a place of exile, is home to those who live here.

“Thus there is nothing wretched unless you think it to be so.

“And in like manner, he who bears all with a calm mind finds his lot wholly blessed. Who is so happy but would wish to change his estate, if he yields to an impatience of his lot? With how much bitterness is the sweetness of man's life mingled! For even though its enjoyment seems pleasant, yet it may not be surely kept from departing when it will.

“It is plain then how wretched is the happiness of mortal life that neither endures forever with men of calm mind, nor ever wholly delights the care-ridden.

“Why, then, mortal men, do you seek that happiness without, which lies within yourselves? You are confounded by error and ignorance.

“I will show you as shortly as I may, the pole on which turns the highest happiness. Is there anything that you value more highly than your own self? You will answer that there is nothing. If then you are master of yourself, you will be in possession of that which you will never wish to lose, and which Fortune will never be able to take from you.” . . .

—from Book 2, Prose 4

I have read the Consolation more times than I can count, and I find myself naturally reading it in the original Latin, instead of an English translation. I have taught it in many college classes, and I was once even foolishly told to vainly sell myself on the academic market as a “Boethius scholar”, but I have still hardly exhausted everything I can from this text.

What I have always learned from it, and will still continue to learn from it, is not about scholarly analysis. I leave that to people who are gifted as scholars. I am not interested merely in the themes, or the history of the concepts, or a clever publication to draw attention to myself. What I have learned from it is immediately practical, and fundamentally life changing.

I’ve seen various structural maps of the text, about how all the parts are apparently intended to fit together. All I know is that it is this very passage that is the major “turn” for me. Up until now, Boethius has worried about his state of affairs, and Lady Philosophy has offered various comforts about his suffering. Here she begins to do something very different. The time for pain management is now over. Here comes the real cure.

Many years ago, I wrote down my sense of this cure, in three parts, as Lady Philosophy first presents it here. It remains, for my purposes, as good a summation as ever:

1) Life is neither blessed nor miserable in itself. Whether it is good or bad depends entirely upon how I choose to think of it.

2) What will define my happiness never depends on what is outside of me, but depends on what is inside of me.

3) The most valuable thing I possess is myself, and I will lose nothing of true value as long as I maintain a rule over myself.

Now none of this is yet a complete argument, or a thorough account, but it is the beginning of a radical shift of attitude. It moves the center of attention from what passively happens, to what is actively done. It asks me to define myself by who I am, and not by my circumstances. It throws our very conception of happiness for a loop.

It shifts the very poles.

I think of how often I have fretted, agonized, and cried about the way of the world, and then I suddenly get it, that the way of the world wasn’t the problem, but my fretting, agonizing, and crying were the problem. Many have more than me, and they still want even more. Many have less than me, and they would be so happy to have what I have.

Yet as soon as I make it about having, I choose to surrender my life. Maybe the having doesn’t matter at all, as fickle, changeable, and deceptive as it is. Maybe the doing is the solution.

I am often criticized for drawing attention to the fact that this, the central moral argument of the Consolation, is fundamentally Stoic in its character. Yet if you know Stoicism, you will hopefully see that the three principles above could just as well have come from Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius. They are philosophical brothers.

Now it begins, the cure instead of the comfort, the actual remedy instead of the first aid, the solution instead of just considering the problem. There is no turning back from here. 

Written in 7/2015