Fish, "View from the Hill"

My sense of nostalgia, spurred on by the nipping of the Black Dog, will often make it difficult for me to appreciate memories. I immediately see the worst in them, and I instinctively wish to turn away.

I once didn't touch a fine musical instrument, or even look at it, for many years, on account of the emotional baggage that went with it. I have books,  CD's, and DVD's on my shelves I cannot bring myself to read, listen to, or watch to this very day.

Even as my thinking would slowly but surely improve, this problem only seemed to get worse, as if some force was pushing back at me. A part of me, I suppose, wished to remain miserable and close my eyes to anything involving pain. 

It may take some time to embrace the fact the both the pain and the pleasure are necessary parts of life, as well as necessary means to finding peace and joy. 

I have an especially pleasant recollection of spending a summer in Austria with the girl I thought would be my best friend forever. She flew in a few weeks after I did, and I felt like my heart would explode when I met her at the airport in Graz. I felt even more twitterpated when I saw that she had brought along recent tapes I had made for her, including this album by Fish, who had just recently departed from my favorite band, Marillion. 

And so, like foolish kids, we listened to it together, over and over, often splitting the headphones, as kids will still do to this day. We would loudly sing out lines from it together, full of melodrama, and then laugh at one another. These were surely the best of times. 

My usefulness to her passed within the next year or so, and then the album sat ignored for almost twenty years. I constantly listened to everything else by Marillion or by Fish, but not this record. It just hurt too much. It's a shame, because it's probably his best work. 

And the other day I dusted it off, and I finally played it again. Was it agonizing? Hell, yes. Was to worth it? Absolutely. 

I had not really grasped the meaning of this song back then, and I now saw how it would have helped me not to have neglected it. It actually contains the gist of most everything I have struggled to come to terms with over the years. 

We are all sold an image, an ideal of a perfect life, and we usually fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. The illusions of success defined by power, wealth, and fame are what drive us, and we are then willing to abandon everything else in pursuit of this fantasy. 

"It will all be better when I get this, or win that, or achieve whatever I have been told is worth achieving."

And in the meantime, we forget justice, we forget compassion, we forget love. We are told to climb the hill, and to push everyone else aside, even to trample on them, and then we will see further. 

A friend once described the song better than I can: "You work your ass off to make money, and you spend the money to buy crap, and you make a giant hill of the crap. Then you stand up on your hill, having pissed on the people down below, and you suddenly have the nagging sense that you just wasted an entire life to see further, when all you needed was to see deeper."

At the age of twenty, I thought it was a great song. At the age of forty, it is now a profound song. Did it describe all of my own foolishness, years before I did any of it? Yes, it most certainly did. 

Written in 7/2010

Fish, "View from the Hill" from Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors (1990)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkdMCo4Nf3Q

You sit and think that everything is coming up roses
But you can't see the weeds that entangle your feet
You can't see the wood for the trees 'cause the forest is burning
And you say it's the smoke in your eyes that's making you cry

They sold you the view from a hill
They told you that the view from the hill would be
Further than you have ever seen before
They sold you the view from a hill
They sold you the view from a hill

You were a dancer and a chancer, a poet and a fool
To the royalty of mayhem you were breaking all the rules
Your decadence outstanding, your hopes flying high
One eye looking over your shoulder, one eye on the hill

You used to say you were scared of heights, you said you got dizzy
You said you didn't like your feet being too far off the ground
But they said that up there you'd find the air would be clearer
Promised you more space to move and more room to breathe

They sold you the view from a hill
They told you that the view from the hill
Is further than you'd ever seen before

You were holding out forever, thought they'd never turn your mind
Your ideals they were higher than you ever could have climbed
We thought they couldn't buy you, that the price would be too high
That the riches there on offer they just wouldn't turn your eyes
But your conscience it was locked up in the prisons of your schemes
Your judgment it was blinded by your visions and your dreams
Praying and hoping that the view from the hill
Is wider than you've ever seen before
For the view from the hill we held our heads so high (smell the roses)

All the loved ones that you lied to are strangers left behind
All the ones that really mattered well you stood on as you climbed
You were holding out forever for your fathers and your peers
Holding out for everyone that ever walked in here
The edge was inside and you rode it all the way
You were playing the games that you learned yesterday
Hanging around like a fool with a name
You are holding your place for the view, the view from the hill

They sold you a view from a hill
Took it all for a view from a hill
And you find the views no further than you've seen before

They sold you the view from a hill

They sold you the view from a hill
And you stood and took the view from the hill

It's simply coming up roses

Sayings of Heraclitus 37

Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 3.5

There is a class of men who communicate, to anyone whom they meet, matters which should be revealed to friends alone, and unload upon the chance listener whatever irks them. 
 
Others, again, fear to confide in their closest intimates; and if it were possible, they would not trust even themselves, burying their secrets deep in their hearts. 
 
But we should do neither. It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one. Yet the former fault is, I should say, the more ingenuous, the latter the more safe.
 
I was never a gregarious person, and I couldn’t help but always feel deeply anxious around other people, so I never had the chance to be that fellow who shared too much with everyone else. 
 
I did, however, share far too much with a very select few people, imagining that they were the special soulmates I craved. The error was just as tragic, because the method of selection was completely off. 
 
Having found myself burned, I apparently thought it better that I should freeze, and thus began many years of deliberate isolation. It was just as foolish, though it seemed to make sense at the time, as I was working only from how I felt, not from what I was willing to understand. 
 
Even when I am, at the moment, oblivious to all the deeper workings inside me, I can still recognize that something is amiss by the simple fact that I am swinging from one extreme to another. There will be far too much of something one day, and then suddenly far too little of something the next. How exhausting and how fruitless. 
 
There are all sorts of pithy sayings to help us through life, along the lines of loving ourselves more, or not giving away too much, and yet none of them will make any sense without an awareness of the mean between excess and deficiency. 
 
That balance is not a matter of social convention, or the whim of the moment, or the coldness of abstract doctrine. That Goldilocks zone is found through the measure of Nature herself, which is discovered through wisdom. 
 
“I don’t feel like I love you anymore!” is in and of itself a meaningless phrase, since it fails to see that love is a choice, an act of the will informed by awareness, and not merely a sentiment. 
 
So it is also with any sort of trust. To trust a “friend” on a gut instinct, or on the fancy of a passion, was always what got me into trouble. I do not wish to suggest that it is wrong to feel intensely, since my own disposition is subject to deep emotion. I do, however, wish to suggest that feeling without first thinking will always be random and rudderless. 
 
When in doubt, I now try to follow Seneca’s advice. Is it better to be too open or too closed? Neither one is better, because what is best is found between them. 

Written in 2/2012

Tidbits from Montaigne 19

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself. 

—Michel de Montaigne, Essays 1.39

Seneca, Moral Letters 3.4

Speak as boldly with him as with yourself. As to yourself, although you should live in such a way that you trust your own self with nothing which you could not entrust even to your enemy, yet, since certain matters occur which convention keeps secret, you should share with a friend at least all your worries and reflections. 
 
Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal. Some, for example, fearing to be deceived, have taught men to deceive; by their suspicions they have given their friend the right to do wrong. Why need I keep back any words in the presence of my friend? Why should I not regard myself as alone when in his company?
 
This is another one of those wonderful passages that taught me something more every time I returned to it. 
 
The first time, I nodded in agreement with the general principle, recognizing that friendship can only come from unconditional honesty, trust, and self-giving. 
 
If a friend is truly a second self, then why should I not share with him everything I would share with myself? I must be careful, of course, to accept both my own limitations as well as his, but what little I am capable of offering must be provided without hesitation. 
 
The second time, I wondered how Seneca managed to describe my own particular situation so accurately. 
 
Whenever such intimate union was lacking, I always met with failure and disappointment, but whenever a bond of conviction was present, I was able to act with confidence. The greater my own love, the greater an opportunity I then give another to love in return. Where I hesitate and require conditions, we both grow weaker. 
 
The third time, I realized how I had no one but myself to blame for following fake friends, and for actually encouraging them to be fake. 
 
It is easy for me to blame others for the pain of failed companionship, to play the part of the victim, yet my suffering arose from my own hasty commitments, and I have foolishly given another an even greater opportunity to act poorly when I offer a misguided trust. 
 
Perhaps my own experience has been especially unfortunate, or perhaps, as is more likely, I chose to be drawn to all the wrong people, but I find it terribly naïve to simply assume that people have my best interests at heart. 
 
There are indeed some who will act with genuine concern, and they are the ones I should carefully seek out. Their seeming rarity makes them appear all the more precious. 
 
There are also many, however, who are unwilling or incapable of loving others for their own sake, and I am doing neither myself nor them any favors if I insist upon friendship where none can be present. 
 
Let me treat all people with the justice they rightly deserve, yet I should also choose my friends far more wisely than I have in the past. The words “I love you” are empty without a trust won by deeds. Some of us have had to learn that the hard way. 

Written in 2/2012

Avarice

Albrecht Dürer, Allegory of Avarice (1507)

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.22

In days of old the Porch at Athens gave us men,

seeing dimly as in old age,

who could believe that the feelings 

of the senses and the imagination 

were but impressions on the mind from bodies without them, 

just as the old custom was to impress 

with swift-running pens

letters upon the surface of a waxen tablet 

which bore no marks before. 

But if the mind with its own force 

can bring forth nothing by its own exertions; 

if it does but lie passive and subject to the marks of other bodies; 

if it reflects, as does, forsooth, a mirror, 

the vain reflections of other things; 

whence thrives there in the soul 

an all-seeing power of knowledge? 

What is the force that sees the single parts, 

or which distinguishes the facts it knows? 

What is the force that gathers up the parts it has distinguished, 

that takes its course in order due, 

now rises to mingle with the things on high, 

and now sinks down among the things below, 

and then to itself brings back itself, 

and, so examining, refutes the false with truth? 

This is a cause of greater power, 

of more effective force by far 

than that which only receives the impressions of material bodies. 

Yet does the passive reception come first, 

rousing and stirring all the strength of the mind in the living body 

When the eyes are smitten with a light, 

or the ears are struck with a voice's sound, 

then is the spirit's energy aroused,

and, thus moved, calls upon like forms, 

such as it holds within itself, fits them to signs without 

and mingles the forms of its imagination 

with those which it has stored within. 

 

—from Book 5, Poem 4

 

Two ancient Greek concepts provide the context for this poem, and they offer us a further opportunity to consider what it really means to “know” something: Stoic apprehension and Platonic recollection. 

 

First, the Athenian Stoics spoke of perception with the analogy of an imprint, as if the senses and the imagination received a sort of stamp through experience. Other schools, from varied traditions, will use the very same image, where a likeness of an object is impressed into awareness. 

 

But is this enough to describe what it means to be conscious? Yes, I most certainly take the form of something else into my own form when I perceive, but the problem is that this alone would reduce all knowledge to a merely passive state. A piece of hot wax also is impressed by the shape of the signet ring, but I will never claim that the piece of wax knows anything at all. 

 

For all the years I have struggled with teaching, and often felt that it was a wasted effort, nothing has discouraged me as much as the prevalent idea that learning is just a matter of absorption. 

 

Expose them to it enough, and they will understand. Repeat the same pattern, over and over again, and they will follow it. Give them no other option, and they will gladly conform. 

 

The highest paying job I was ever given seemed like a godsend at first. Somehow, I managed to land myself a gig at an incredibly prestigious prep school, and all I had to do for the rest of my life was play the part of an eccentric intellectual, complete with tweed jacket, amusing students in blue blazers, and flattering rich trustees at cocktail parties. 

 

Even my own father, a man of principle, told me I was made for this job, and that I needed to get this one right. I resigned from adjunct teaching work at a state college to now hopefully become someone new. 

 

And within six months I had what can only be called a complete nervous breakdown. What went wrong? I went wrong of course, because I lacked a sense of who I needed to be, but the circumstance that so deeply discouraged me was the reduction of people to sponges. 

 

Classes were supposed to be based upon the dialectic, and yet everything revolved around preparing students for standardized tests. I could do whatever I wanted, as long as they passed those tests with acceptable scores. The tests were all multiple choice, without exception, prepared for the teachers far in advance. 

 

I still have nightmares about a veteran teacher at that academy, who loved to say, “This is what the kids need to know!” I was given lists of need-to-know facts about the Ottoman Empire, or Mughal India, or Buddhist meditation. There were formulae, and never any reflection. There were clearly set patterns for correctness, and never once the option to think for oneself. 

 

It was training young people like puppies, to become the big dogs of the future, and to never giving them any choice, or any creativity, or any chance to form a conscience for themselves. The answers were like soundbites, useful for the shallow speeches they would eventually have to give when they ran the profitable businesses they inherited from their parents, or when they ultimately ran for political office. 

 

“Dude, you screwed that one up! All that money? If you’d played it right, you could have been the Dean before you retired. What were you thinking, breaking down like that?”

 

I was thinking. That was precisely my problem. Need-to-know! Need-to-know! Need-to-know!

 

Second, the Platonists spoke of learning like a process of remembering. It isn’t enough to say that a mind is acted upon; a mind is a mind precisely because it is able to act for itself. Yes, we soak up experiences, but we are not epistemological sponges. What am I to do with the data? What will transform the facts into understanding?

 

I see one thing now, and another thing then, and beyond the seeing is the comparing and contrasting. How are they different? How are they the same? No standardized test can teach the power of judgment, and yet we have based decades of merit on tests that treat a man like a monkey. 

 

If you give me the pieces of something, only my own intelligence can find a way to put them together in an orderly way. A piece of wax can’t do it, since it is just wax. Even a machine can’t do it, unless it is given instructions by a mind. 

 

Mind is activity, not passivity. Mind is the power to make connections between things, not being put in the situation of being connected. Awareness moves, and it is not merely moved. 

 

“I was told everything I ever needed to know!” If you think that, you are sorely mistaken. You may have been told many wonderful things, but they meant nothing if you didn’t learn them for yourself. 

 

There is a power within us, a force to abstract a universal idea from many instances, to join those ideas together in judgments, and to combine those judgments into demonstrations, the very means by which we increase our knowledge. To deny that I have it is ridiculous, since I employ it all the time, even if I employ it poorly. 

 

Plato attributed this power to the fact that our souls had once known the fullness of truth, the totality of the forms, but had somehow forgotten all of it. Learning is therefore remembering, where the impression of the particular revives the awareness of the universal. 

 

I can’t speak to that, since I don’t remember any past states of my existence, but I can describe what happens to me when I proceed from ignorance to wisdom. What wasn’t there before is now suddenly there. 

 

What was given to me in experience becomes something more, by means of some other agency, and so I see many things as one, where once they seemed as diverse. I see many things as connected, where once they seemed as separated. I see many things as purposeful, where once they seemed as random. 

 

Even as most all aspects of my daily life, from sleeping it off in the gutter to a fancy teaching job, suggest that I am determined by what happens to me, a tickle in my soul tells me that I am not a product of anything except myself. It is mind that makes me myself, and my mind is my own. 

 

I am not a sponge, and I am not God. I know something, but I do not know everything. To actively know myself does not encompass All that Is, though it gives me a clue as to where I might fit into All that Is. 

Written in 1/2016

Dhammapada 90

There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey, and abandoned grief, who has freed himself on all sides, and thrown off all fetters.

Fractals 4

 

Epictetus, Golden Sayings 131

Wherefore a good man and true, bearing in mind who he is and where he came and from whom he sprang, cares only how he may fill his post with due discipline and obedience to God.

Do You wish that I continue to live? Then will I live, as one that is free and noble, as You would have me. For You have made me free from hindrance in what appertains to me. 

But have You no further need of me? I thank You! Up to this hour have I stayed for Your sake and none other's: and now in obedience to You I depart.

"How do you depart?"

Again I say, as You would have me; as one that is free, as Your servant, as one whose ear is open unto what You do enjoin, what You do forbid.

Seneca, Moral Letters 3.3

Those persons indeed put last first and confound their duties, who, violating the rules of Theophrastus, judge a man after they have made him their friend, instead of making him their friend after they have judged him. 
 
Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. 
 
Cultured people don’t always appreciate my bluntness in expressing it, but I often notice that I won’t just make a slight miscalculation here or there, as if I had muddled an addition of sums, and instead I get the entire process ass-backward. I’m not just off by a bit, I’m headed in the completely opposite direction. 
 
I concern myself with building up all the things on the outside of me, while I pay no attention to the things on the inside of me. 
 
I expect to receive everything, and I am willing to give nothing. 
 
And when it comes to friendship, I latch onto people because I am impressed by the appeal of what gratifies me, not by the presence of their virtue. 
 
What have I missed when I fall for that lure of false friendship? I am completely turned around, longing for all the worst things, as a result of my fundamental confusion about right and wrong. 
 
I will manage to make the best of myself when I become close to those who are also working to make the best of themselves. There are all sorts of qualities that can be good in people, such as charm, intelligence, hard work, a sense of humor, or a spirit of fun. Such attributes are worthwhile only when guided by character, just as any human action can only become noble if informed by a conscience. 
 
When Socrates insisted that wisdom was the highest human good, since all lower benefits derived from it, the Stoics took notice, and they ran with that profound yet simple insight. 
 
I must know who the man is before I join my life to his; I must understand what is in her soul before I bend down on one knee. Only my power of reason is able to do that, and all the mightiest desires in the world are pointless when separated from sound judgment. 
 
Every person, even every creature of any sort, in this world deserves my respect, according to the order of Nature. When I add something even more to that, the further commitment of a personal love, minds must be united as much as hearts, principles as much as preferences. 
 
Perfect friendships don’t require perfect people, only people helping one another to become more perfect together. Once the sacred promise is made, after the deepest deliberation, absolutely everything else becomes insignificant. This is why true love, rightly understood, conquers all. 

Written in 2/2012 

Aesop's Fables 31

The Fox and the Grapes

One hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. 

"Just the thing to quench my thirst" quoth he. 

Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. 

Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

It is easy to despise what you cannot get. 

The Last Days of Pompeii

James Hamilton, The Last Days of Pompeii (1864)

 

Seneca, Moral Letters 3.2

Now if you used this word of ours in the popular sense and called him "friend" in the same way in which we speak of all candidates for election as "honorable gentlemen," and as we greet all men whom we meet casually, if their names slip us for the moment, with the salutation "my dear sir"—so be it. 
 
But if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means. Indeed, I would have you discuss everything with a friend; but first of all, discuss the man himself. When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgment. 
 
Now it may seem harmless to use terms a bit more broadly or loosely, perhaps on the grounds that we are giving others the benefit of the doubt, or because we are inspiring them to hopefully become what we expect of them. 
 
I knew a stubborn fellow in Texas, who once went to dispute a minor traffic violation, and yet got himself a further contempt of court charge. He apparently only addressed the judge as “Mister” and was told to address him as “Your Honor”. The defendant was happy to explain that the judge lived down the street from him, so he knew the comings and goings at his home. 
 
“I’m sorry, but I can’t call any man honorable who has another woman sleep over whenever his wife is visiting her sister in Dallas.” 
 
It may not have helped his legal situation, but at least he had the rough integrity to call them as he saw them.
 
The danger is that when we call someone by a certain title in a sloppy way, we then also easily lose sight of the true meaning behind that title, and so we can become confused and lazy about our moral worth. The appearance then sadly takes precedence over the reality. 
 
If I do wish to take the time to be polite, however, let me be certain not to get my own thinking tied up in knots. The situation becomes all the more critical when it concerns labeling people as our friends; so much is at stake where the giving of ourselves to others is concerned. 
 
A friend is more than just an acquaintance, or a colleague, or even someone whose company I enjoy. These others are people who might be useful to me, and to whom I should be useful, but they do not rise to the level of becoming a second self. 
 
If the bond still depends on what is given or taken, instead of on the person for his own sake, then the relationship is contingent and fortuitous. Trust is not yet absolute. 
 
Winning trust will take time, and it will require shared hardships as well as shared pleasures. I should have been very thoughtful in picking my friends, especially the ones to whom I surrendered the most, and the fact that I failed to do so was of my own doing. Seneca wishes for Lucilius not to make the same mistakes. 
 
If I want to share my life with genuine friends, I will have to make my decisions very carefully, and yet once I have made such difficult decisions, and I have offered my total dedication, I must give of myself without reservation. Be very conservative in making a promise, and very liberal in keeping it. 
 
Love is a total guarantee, with no asterisks or footnotes. If I offer it freely, and then take it back selfishly, I have become one of those fake friends, the ones who receive the benefits while running away from the sacrifices. 

Written in 2/2012

Abandoned Places 9

Nature 11

Seneca, Moral Letters 3.1

Letter 3: On true and false friendship

You have sent a letter to me through the hand of a "friend" of yours, as you call him. And in your very next sentence you warn me not to discuss with him all the matters that concern you, saying that even you yourself are not accustomed to do this; in other words, you have in the same letter affirmed and denied that he is your friend.

 

Of all the missteps I have made over the years, the one that brought me the most pain was probably my poor choice of friends. I made commitments to all of the wrong people, precisely because I wanted to feel comforted and appreciated, even as I did not understand what actual friendship was to begin with. 

 

I notice that I still instinctively speak of the “wrong” people, and yet that is another hangover from my earlier confusion. They chose, entirely on their own terms, to be who they wanted to be, and the only thing wrong was my assumption that they would magically become something that they were not. 

 

I now begin to discern within myself that classic error every Stoic warned me about, of expecting happiness to be something that was given to me by others. By making love about the blind receiving instead of the conscious giving, I was digging my own grave. 

 

There were, for example, hundreds, probably even thousands, of girls at my college who were very much like the one I desperately miss to this very day. I don’t long for them, of course, because I never made the choice to love them without condition, and to tie my own worth to their estimation. It was my thinking that was the root of my problem.

 

When Lucilius speaks about his supposed friend, and yet also warns Seneca not to share any of his personal matters with him, I both nod my head and grit my teeth. That young man, much like this young man, used a term far too loosely, and actually employed it in a contradictory manner. 

 

If he is a friend, trust him with all that you have. If he is not a friend, treat him with the decency you would treat any stranger, but do not expect a bond of trust where none is present. Wherever there are conditions or reservations attached, it is not love or friendship at all. Convenience or pleasure are never bonds, because they come and go due to the whims of circumstance, instead of being forged by the judgments of character. 

 

It always made me deeply uncomfortable when people put on a smiling face, and clinked glasses together, and slapped one another on the back for being such good buddies. Only moments later, as soon as heads were turned, they would whisper gossip and slander. 

 

Was I not working hard enough to make them like me? To even suspect that was exactly the reason I did not understand. They weren’t friends, or even people who had my best interests at heart. 

 

I would feel hurt, and get angry at them, when I only needed to correct myself. 

Written in 2/2012

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ 3.23

Of four things which bring great peace

1. "My Son, now will I teach you the way of peace and of true liberty."

2. Do, O my Lord, as You  say, for this is pleasing unto me to hear.

3. "Strive, My Son, to do another's will rather than your own. Choose always to have less rather than more. Seek always after the lowest place, and to be subject to all. Wish always and pray that the will of God be fulfilled in you. Behold, such a man as this enters into the inheritance of peace and quietness."

4. O my Lord, this Your short discourse has in itself much of perfectness. It is short in words but full of meaning, and abundant in fruit. For if it were possible that I should fully keep it, disturbance would not so easily arise within me. For as often as I feel myself disquieted and weighed down, I find myself to have gone back from this teaching. But You, Who are Almighty, and always loves progress in the soul, vouchsafe more grace, that I may be enabled to fulfill Your exhortation, and work out my salvation.

A PRAYER AGAINST EVIL THOUGHTS

5. O Lord my God, be not You far from me, my God, haste You to help me, for many thoughts and great fears have risen up against me, afflicting my soul. How shall I pass through them unhurt? how shall I break through them?

6. "I," says He, "will go before you, and make the crooked places straight." I will open the prison doors, and reveal to you the secret places.

7. Do, Lord, as You say; and let all evil thoughts fly away before Your face. This is my hope and my only comfort, to fly unto You in all tribulation, to hope in You, to call upon You from my heart and patiently wait for Your loving kindness.

A PRAYER FOR ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE MIND

8. Enlighten me, Blessed Jesus, with the brightness of Your inner light, and cast forth all darkness from the habitation of my heart. Restrain my many wandering thoughts, and carry away the temptations which strive to do me hurt. Fight You mightily for me, and drive forth the evil beasts, so call I alluring lusts, that peace may be within Your walls and plenteousness of praise within Your palaces, even in my pure conscience. Command You the winds and the storms, say unto the sea, "Be still," say unto the stormy wind, "Hold your peace," so shall there be a great calm.

9. Oh send forth Your light and Your truth, that they may shine upon the earth; for I am but earth without form and void until You give me light. Pour forth Your grace from above; water my heart with the dew of heaven; give the waters of devotion to water the face of the earth, and cause it to bring forth good and perfect fruit. Lift up my mind which is oppressed with the weight of sins, and raise my whole desire to heavenly things; that having tasted the sweetness of the happiness which is from above, it may take no pleasure in thinking of things of earth.

10. Draw me and deliver me from every unstable comfort of creatures, for no created thing is able to satisfy my desire and to give me comfort. Join me to Yourself by the inseparable bond of love, for You alone are sufficient to him that loves You, and without You all things are vain toys.

 

Stoic Snippets 39

What then is that about which we ought to employ our serious pains? This one thing, thoughts just, and acts social, and words which never lie, and a disposition which gladly accepts all that happens, as necessary, as usual, as flowing from a principle and source of the same kind.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.33

Stoic Conversations 32

"I want you to fight me!"

"Why should we fight?"

"What you say is a threat to democracy!"

"I have never heard democracy complain."

"That's a part of your lies and your fascism. What you think is wrong!"

"Then I am wrong. Pity me. Explain it to me. Yelling won't do. No need to hate me."

—bsc

Stoic Conversations 31

"You know your Dad really is sort of a loser, right? He seems smart, but he can't make ends meet. I could give him some tips."

"He does his best."

"Yeah, not nearly good enough. I own two liquor stores, I live in Edmond, and I drive a fucking Cadillac Escalade. What does your Dad actually have?"

"A conscience."

—bsc

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.21

“Do you see then, how in knowledge of all things, the subject uses its own standard of capability, and not those of the objects known?

 

“And this is but reasonable, for every judgment formed is an act of the person who judges, and therefore each man must of necessity perform his own action from his own capability and not the capability of any other.”

 

—from Book 5, Prose 4

 

Whenever I know something, it is certainly made present to me, yet how it appears, which aspects of it are clear and which aspects of it are unclear, will depend on how I am able to actively approach it. The scope of my own powers determines what can be brought within myself, and what must be left outside myself. 

 

Or to put it another way, it isn’t just a matter of the thing observed; the position of the observer is the missing half I too often overlook. Any good physicist knows this, just as should any good philosopher. 

 

Relativity is not the same thing as relativism. Because all things are in relationships does not mean that there is no measure in things. 

 

When my son was a baby, he once grew very angry when he couldn’t squeeze a square peg into a round hole on his shape sorter toy. I had an epiphany right then and there, recognizing that the way he was growing ever more frustrated, finally erupting in a temper tantrum, was pretty much how I was still approaching my life as an adult. He couldn’t know better then, but I should have known better. 

 

He wanted something to fit where it couldn’t fit, not seeing that the parts will only come together in certain ways, following their specific properties. The shape of the peg and the shape of the hole are equally important. I, for one, was neglecting to accept that who I was had to be the medium for what I saw. 

 

“I can’t wrap my hands around it!” does not mean that it cannot be held, only that I can’t embrace all of it. 

 

“I don’t understand it!” does not mean that it can’t be fathomed, only that I am not capable of discerning all the senses of it. 

 

Sometimes I complain that God hasn’t given me exactly what I want, and so I scream out that He is terribly unfair. Clearly, He can’t exist if I have to suffer, can He? 

 

At other times I accuse God of making me His slave, because His Providence already knows everything that I will do. How dare He know me better than I know myself? 

 

Just like the child and his toy, no? The weakness is in my capacity to accept, not in the capacity of anything else to be acceptable. 

Written in 1/2016