Love and Death

LISTEN. Today in Happiness, it's Love and Death (but not the Woody film) in How to Be an Epicurean.

And we'll have report previews on Stoicism and the Art of Happiness: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life by Donald Robertson, Daniel Nettle's Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile, and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.

Noting the relatively rare (for a philosopher) and deeply disquieting (for an Epicurean) suicide of Lucretius, I'll again promote Jennifer Michael Hecht's wise plea to all who've loved and lost, as well as those who've never loved at all, to Stay!

“None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings — the endless possibilities that living offers — and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay.” Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It

We may also want to discuss Camus's view of suicide as compounding but not altering the absurdities of existence, and William James's answer to the question "Is life worth living?" Is maybe enough of a wish to build a dream on? It had better be.

We've heard a lot about sexual harassment and quid pro quos lately. As Wilson drolly observes, there's no risk of unwanted pregnancy from the sharing of teacakes. No means no pro quo.

How old is too old? Depends on who you ask, and when. I feel both better and worse now in my sixties than I thought I would, back when I was listening to The Who glibly hoping to die before they got old. One of them did, but there's no reason to think he's "in a better place." They weren't really talking about their generation, says Susan Neiman, "it's a very old sentiment." And generally, older people don't share it. One happy day at a time, so long as you've still got your health and curiosity and epicurean delight in life's simple pleasures.

I picked up the Readers' Digest in the grocery checkout line yesterday, and happened upon a quote from actor Alan Alda: "I don't understand people who say they don't want to live forever. Why not?" He's in his 80s and has been diagnosed with Parkinson's.

Well, why not? Forever's awfully long, but how about trying another day, week, year, decade... ? What have we got to lose?


For most of us, ready or not, there will come a time. John Lachs is eloquent on the subject in In Love With Life.

In 2008, my Dad was diagnosed with late-stage leukemia. In his waning days that summer he picked up and annotated the inscribed copy of Lachs’s In Love With Life: reflections on the joy of living and why we hate to die (Vanderbilt, 1998 ) I’d given him in much earlier and healthier days. Dad wrote that it “took on much greater significance when thoroughly digested in 2008.” He died that September.

Lachs: “The lesson is clear. Love life so long as there is something worth loving… But at some point, wanting more life runs into the chill reality that the kind of life we can get is no longer worth the cost. This does not mean that we surrender our love of life. As in a broken love affair, we give up the loved one, not the love. With anguish or with quiet resignation, we face the fact that the days of love are gone.”
Dad: “Well expressed!”
Lachs: “All it takes to overcome tiredness with life is to open open our eyes. The world is throbbing with energy and promise, and if we can view it as kin to us, as our home, as in some sense ours, its movement will forever hold our gaze. The fascination abides even if we are too weak to do much more than see what happens next. We need simply to immerse ourselves in the energy of life all around us, as fish do swimming in the throbbing sea.”
Dad: “great!!” [Remembering & celebrating JCO, 1928-2008]

The current version of humans, at least, seems to be limited to something in the neighborhood of 122. How many more martinis would that be, Ed?
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William James's 1882 letter to his dying father:

"...We have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. You are old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us hope and pray, dear, dear old Mother is waiting for you to join her. If you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. Only, if you are still in possession of your normal consciousness, I should like to see you once again before we part... As for the other side, and Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I can't say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if that were true, all would be solved and justified. And it comes strangely over me in bidding you good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night. Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don't see you again—Farewell! a blessed farewell! Your

WILLIAM