“But,” you object, “my illness does not allow me to be doing anything; it has withdrawn me from all my duties.”
It is your body that is hampered by ill-health, and not your soul as well. It is for this reason that it clogs the feet of the runner and will hinder the handiwork of the cobbler or the artisan; but if your soul be habitually in practice, you will plead and teach, listen and learn, investigate and meditate.
What more is necessary? Do you think that you are doing nothing if you possess self-control in your illness? You will be showing that a disease can be overcome, or at any rate endured.
There is, I assure you, a place for virtue even upon a bed of sickness. It is not only the sword and the battleline that prove the soul alert and unconquered by fear; a man can display bravery even when wrapped in his bedclothes.
You have something to do: wrestle bravely with disease. If it shall compel you to nothing, beguile you to nothing, it is a notable example that you display.
O what ample matter were there for renown, if we could have spectators of our sickness! Be your own spectator; seek your own applause.
It is your body that is hampered by ill-health, and not your soul as well. It is for this reason that it clogs the feet of the runner and will hinder the handiwork of the cobbler or the artisan; but if your soul be habitually in practice, you will plead and teach, listen and learn, investigate and meditate.
What more is necessary? Do you think that you are doing nothing if you possess self-control in your illness? You will be showing that a disease can be overcome, or at any rate endured.
There is, I assure you, a place for virtue even upon a bed of sickness. It is not only the sword and the battleline that prove the soul alert and unconquered by fear; a man can display bravery even when wrapped in his bedclothes.
You have something to do: wrestle bravely with disease. If it shall compel you to nothing, beguile you to nothing, it is a notable example that you display.
O what ample matter were there for renown, if we could have spectators of our sickness! Be your own spectator; seek your own applause.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 78
Old habits die hard, so I will still catch myself bemoaning my insignificance. They told me there were certain benchmarks for success, and once I realize how I have failed to meet them, I am confronted with a sense of waste. I am broke and I am unsung: was I too dull, or perhaps just too weak, to get the job done?
Then I remember why I chose a divergent path of duty, one that seeks an increase of the virtues over an accumulation of trophies. I do not need to court fortune and fame in order to be a good man, while any weakness in my flesh is not an obstacle to cultivating a strength of my spirit.
An illness can certainly interfere with making money or accumulating fame, even as it offers all the more options to practice prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. Because the Stoic embraces a very different standard of productivity, he finds a hardship to be as fruitful for his character as the entrepreneur believes a new market to be favorable for his profits.
Perhaps I can no longer drag myself to a meeting of the Senate. No matter, I will go about being a thoughtful and decent man in the confines of my bed.
Flying in the face of convention, I can actually be grateful for the presence of a handicap, since it allows me to do the gritty work of improving my self-mastery. You warn me that no one will notice, and that there will be no worldly prize? But I will surely notice, and such a peace of mind will be its own reward.
Long ago, I met a fellow down at the pub who was filled with resentment over the loss of his legs, a bitterness only the whiskey would numb. Later, I got to know a colleague who was remarkably cheerful in a like predicament, and I ventured to ask him how he always managed to be so upbeat. He grinned, held a finger up to his lips, tapped his wheelchair, and whispered, “Don’t let them know! It’s my superpower.”
I pray that the first man came to discover the same serenity as the second man.
Recently, I noticed how my eyesight was fading fast, and it suddenly occurred to me that, like my Nana, I might one day no longer be able to read. For a bookworm, this seems like the most horrific torture, until he recognizes why the presence or absence of mere printed words does not determine his capacity to understand and to love.
Old habits die hard, so I will still catch myself bemoaning my insignificance. They told me there were certain benchmarks for success, and once I realize how I have failed to meet them, I am confronted with a sense of waste. I am broke and I am unsung: was I too dull, or perhaps just too weak, to get the job done?
Then I remember why I chose a divergent path of duty, one that seeks an increase of the virtues over an accumulation of trophies. I do not need to court fortune and fame in order to be a good man, while any weakness in my flesh is not an obstacle to cultivating a strength of my spirit.
An illness can certainly interfere with making money or accumulating fame, even as it offers all the more options to practice prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. Because the Stoic embraces a very different standard of productivity, he finds a hardship to be as fruitful for his character as the entrepreneur believes a new market to be favorable for his profits.
Perhaps I can no longer drag myself to a meeting of the Senate. No matter, I will go about being a thoughtful and decent man in the confines of my bed.
Flying in the face of convention, I can actually be grateful for the presence of a handicap, since it allows me to do the gritty work of improving my self-mastery. You warn me that no one will notice, and that there will be no worldly prize? But I will surely notice, and such a peace of mind will be its own reward.
Long ago, I met a fellow down at the pub who was filled with resentment over the loss of his legs, a bitterness only the whiskey would numb. Later, I got to know a colleague who was remarkably cheerful in a like predicament, and I ventured to ask him how he always managed to be so upbeat. He grinned, held a finger up to his lips, tapped his wheelchair, and whispered, “Don’t let them know! It’s my superpower.”
I pray that the first man came to discover the same serenity as the second man.
Recently, I noticed how my eyesight was fading fast, and it suddenly occurred to me that, like my Nana, I might one day no longer be able to read. For a bookworm, this seems like the most horrific torture, until he recognizes why the presence or absence of mere printed words does not determine his capacity to understand and to love.
—Reflection written in 11/2013
IMAGE: Ricard Canals, Sick Child (c. 1903)
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