The gloom, however, furnished me with some food for thought; I felt a certain mental thrill, and a transformation unaccompanied by fear, due to the novelty and the unpleasantness of an unusual occurrence.
Of course I am not speaking to you of myself at this point, because I am far from being a perfect person, or even a man of middling qualities; I refer to one over whom fortune has lost her control. Even such a man's mind will be smitten with a thrill and he will change color.
For there are certain emotions, my dear Lucilius, which no courage can avoid; Nature reminds courage how perishable a thing it is. And so he will contract his brow when the prospect is forbidding, will shudder at sudden apparitions, and will become dizzy when he stands at the edge of a high precipice and looks down.
This is not fear; it is a natural feeling which reason cannot rout. That is why certain brave men, most willing to shed their own blood, cannot bear to see the blood of others. Some persons collapse and faint at the sight of a freshly inflicted wound; others are affected similarly on handling or viewing an old wound which is festering. And others meet the sword-stroke more readily than they see it dealt.
Of course I am not speaking to you of myself at this point, because I am far from being a perfect person, or even a man of middling qualities; I refer to one over whom fortune has lost her control. Even such a man's mind will be smitten with a thrill and he will change color.
For there are certain emotions, my dear Lucilius, which no courage can avoid; Nature reminds courage how perishable a thing it is. And so he will contract his brow when the prospect is forbidding, will shudder at sudden apparitions, and will become dizzy when he stands at the edge of a high precipice and looks down.
This is not fear; it is a natural feeling which reason cannot rout. That is why certain brave men, most willing to shed their own blood, cannot bear to see the blood of others. Some persons collapse and faint at the sight of a freshly inflicted wound; others are affected similarly on handling or viewing an old wound which is festering. And others meet the sword-stroke more readily than they see it dealt.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 57
Though it is almost impossible for me to express in my own words, I believe I know something of the sort of feeling that Seneca describes. It isn’t quite distress, which involves a conscious awareness of a present evil, and it isn’t quite fear, which involves a conscious expectation of some impending danger.
Seneca says it is like a thrill, and the only way I can characterize it is being possessed by a sense of awe, one that imposes an impression of being powerless in the face of something far mightier than myself.
And a critical part of this feeling is that it overwhelms us, regardless of how highly developed we are in wisdom and virtue. The Stoics, of course, prize the ability to rule our emotions, such that an ideal sage would theoretically be someone who has an absolute mastery over them, yet I wonder if in practice there will always remain certain core passions that will elude our control. In that case, I can only learn to bear them, not to conquer them.
My dizzying reaction to heights, for example, has long refused to be tamed. I can manage to endure a violence done to me, while I cannot stand to see it done to another. Though it happens rarely, I can be overcome by a specific sort of self-consciousness that gives me a crippling type of tunnel vision. We surely all have our own peculiar instances.
As for those tunnels, beyond my unpleasant experiences in Boston, I find myself dreaming about them regularly, especially railroad or subway tunnels. I always wake from these dreams with a sliver of that “thrill” or “awe” feeling, and it sometimes frustrates me that I have no command over it.
Now the usual pop psychology, derived from Freud, tells me it’s all about sex, but a psychiatrist I know, more a fan of Jung, grinned from ear to ear when I once asked him about the tunnel dreams.
“Classic!” he said. “Not everything is about sex, especially sex itself. A tunnel is often an archetype of transition, and it may reflect your concern about a change into something unknown. Yes, it could be about death, but frequently it’s about far more powerful transformations than death.”
When you put it that way, I feel that sense of awe coming on again. There are things at work within me that elude even my own capacity to tame.
Though it is almost impossible for me to express in my own words, I believe I know something of the sort of feeling that Seneca describes. It isn’t quite distress, which involves a conscious awareness of a present evil, and it isn’t quite fear, which involves a conscious expectation of some impending danger.
Seneca says it is like a thrill, and the only way I can characterize it is being possessed by a sense of awe, one that imposes an impression of being powerless in the face of something far mightier than myself.
And a critical part of this feeling is that it overwhelms us, regardless of how highly developed we are in wisdom and virtue. The Stoics, of course, prize the ability to rule our emotions, such that an ideal sage would theoretically be someone who has an absolute mastery over them, yet I wonder if in practice there will always remain certain core passions that will elude our control. In that case, I can only learn to bear them, not to conquer them.
My dizzying reaction to heights, for example, has long refused to be tamed. I can manage to endure a violence done to me, while I cannot stand to see it done to another. Though it happens rarely, I can be overcome by a specific sort of self-consciousness that gives me a crippling type of tunnel vision. We surely all have our own peculiar instances.
As for those tunnels, beyond my unpleasant experiences in Boston, I find myself dreaming about them regularly, especially railroad or subway tunnels. I always wake from these dreams with a sliver of that “thrill” or “awe” feeling, and it sometimes frustrates me that I have no command over it.
Now the usual pop psychology, derived from Freud, tells me it’s all about sex, but a psychiatrist I know, more a fan of Jung, grinned from ear to ear when I once asked him about the tunnel dreams.
“Classic!” he said. “Not everything is about sex, especially sex itself. A tunnel is often an archetype of transition, and it may reflect your concern about a change into something unknown. Yes, it could be about death, but frequently it’s about far more powerful transformations than death.”
When you put it that way, I feel that sense of awe coming on again. There are things at work within me that elude even my own capacity to tame.
—Reflection written in 5/2013
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